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PUBLISHED  ON  THE  FOUNDATION 

ESTABLISHED  IN  MEMORY  OF 

THEODORE  L.  GLASGOW 


6    114       14 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE 
MODERN    STATE 


BY 
HAROLD  J.   LASKI 

SOMETIME    EXHIBITIONER    OF    NEW    COLLEGE,    OXFOHD: 

OF    THE    DEPARTMENT    OF    HISTORY    IN 

HARVARD    rNlVEHSITY 


NEW  HAVEN 
YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON     •     HUMPHREY    MII.FORD     •     OXFOHD    tTNIVERSITY    PRESS 

MDCCCCXIX' 


S^^T^ 


Copyright,  1919,  by 
Yale  University  Press 


First  published,  March,  1919 
Second  printing,  November,  1919 


0  c 
U33 


a. 


THE 

THEODORE   L.   GLASGOW 

MEMORIAL  PUBLICATION   EUND 


The  present  volume  is  the  tii-st  work  published  by  the 
Yale  Uuiversity  Press  on  the  Theodore  L.  Glasgow  Memorial 
Publication  Fund.  This  Foundation  was  established  Septem- 
ber 17,  1918,  by  an  anonyniotis  gift  to  Yale  University  in 
memory  of  Flight  Sub-Lieut.  Theodore  L.  Glasgow,  R.  N. 
He  was  born  in  Montreal,  Canada,  May  25,  1898,  the  eldest 
son  of  Eobert  and  Louise  C.  Glasgow,  and  was  educated  at 
the  University  of  Toronto  Schools  and  at  the  Royal  Military 
College,  Kingston.  In  August,  1916,  he  entered  the  Royal 
Naval  Air  Service  and  in  July,  1917,  went  to  France  with  the 
Tenth  Squadron  attached  to  the  Twenty-Second  Wing  of  the 
Royal  Flying  Corps.  A  month  later,  August  19,  1917,  he  was 
killed  in  action  on  the  Ypres  front. 


TO 
MR.  JUSTICE  HOLMES 

AND 
FELIX  FRANKFURTER 

THE   TWO    YOUNGEST   OF   MY    FRIENDS 


I  AM  tempted  to  believe  that  what  we  call  necessary  in- 
stitutions are  often  no  more  than  institutions  to  which  we 
have  grown  accustomed,  and  that  in  matters  of  social 
constitution  the  field  of  possibilities  is  much  more  exten- 
sive than  men  living  in  their  various  societies  are  ready 

to  imagine. 

Recollections  of  de  Tocqueville, 
Page  101. 


PREFACE 

THIS  volume  is  in  some  sort  the  sequel  to  a  book  on  the 
problem  of  sovereignty  which  I  published  in  March, 
1917.  It  covers  rather  broader  ground,  since  its  main 
object  is  to  insist  that  the  problem  of  s;u\-er(>ignty  is  only  a 
special  ease  of  the  problem  of  authority,  and  to  indicate  what  I 
shmiTd  regard  as  the  main  path  of  approach  to  its  solution. 
Where,  therefore,  the  previous  studies  were,  in  the  main,  nega- 
tive and  critical,  this  book  is  positive  and  constmictive.  In  the 
main,  the  evidence  upon  which  its  conclusions  are  based  is 
French.  That  is  because  an  earlier  study  of  de  Maistre  con- 
vinced me  that  it  is  in  France,  above  all,  that  the  ideals  I  have 
tried  to  depict  are  set  in  the  clearest  and  most  suggestive  light. 
I  had  originally  intended  to  follow  this  volume  by  a  third 
essay  on  the  political  theory  of  the  ConciUar  Movement.  But 
it  now  seems  to  me  more  useful  to  attempt  a  definitely  con- 
structive analysis  of  politics  in  the  perspective  set  by  the  first 
chapter  of  this  present  volume.  Accordingly  I  have  planned 
a  full  book  on  the  theory  of  the  state  which  I  hope  to  have 
ready  within  a  reasonable  time. 

For  so  modest  a  volume  this  book,  like  its  predecessors,  has 
debts  too  immense  to  go  without  acknowledgement.  Among 
the  dead,  I  would  like  to  emphasise  how  very  much  I  have 
learned  from  Acton  and  Maitland;  their  writings  have  been 
to  me  a  veritable  store-house  of  inspiration.  Among  living 
men,  I  owe  much  to  Professor  Duguit  of  Bordeaux,  to  Dr. 
Figgis,  and,  in  spite  of,  and  perhaps  because  of,  our  differences, 
to  Professor  Dicey.  My  old  tutor,  Mr.  Ernest  Barker  of  New 
College,  is  the  unconscious  sponsor  of  this,  as  of  my  earlier 
book.  Indeed,  if  it  has  merit  of  any  kind,  it  is  to  the  teaching 
of  politics  in  the  Modern  History  School  at  Oxford  that  I  would 
ascribe  it. 

Friends  have  been  generous  in  their  counsel.  My  colleagues. 
Dean  Pound  and  Professor  McIIwain,  have  been  untiring  in 
their  constant  encouragement;    and  from  Dean  Pound's  own 


14  PREFACE 

writings,  soon,  one  may  hope,  to  be  collected  in  some  more 
permanent  form,  I  learned  the  value  of  a  j)ragmatic  theory  of 
state-function.  My  friends  of  the  New  Republic,  particularly 
Mr.  Francis  Hackett,  and  Mr.  Herbert  Croly,  have  given  me 
generous  assistance.  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  has  lent  me  great 
aid  by  friendly  and  suggestive  counsel;  and  I  found  his  "Great 
Society"  an  invaluable  guide  to  many  difficult  paths.  To  an 
unknown  critic  in  the  London  Times  I  owe  the  debt  that  keen 
comment  must  always  create. 

But  the  great  obligation  of  the  book  is  to  Mr.  Justice  Holmes. 
It  goes  too  deep  for  words;  and  I  can  only  emphasise  my  con- 
sciousness that  I  shall  never  know  how  much  I  have  in  these 
years  learned  from  the  talks  we  have  had  and  the  letters  he  has 
written.  They  are  things  that  come  but  once  or  twice  in  a 
lifetime. 

One  more  personal  word  the  reader  will  perhaps  allow  me. 
I  began  my  other  book  with  a  sense  that  it  might  give  pleasure 
to  my  friend  A.  R.  Herron.  He  was  killed  before  I  could  finish 
it.  This  book  would  have  gone  to  my  friend  Frank  Haldinstein, 
scholar, of  Christ  Church  and  captain  in  the  Royal  Engineers. 
But  his  name,  too,  has  been  added  to  the  list  on  which  the 
Oxford  of  my  generation  will,  with  undying  pride,  write  those 
of  Arthur  Heath,  of  Nowell  Sievers,  and  of  A.  D.  Gillespie — 
all  of  them  of  New  College.  When  I  look  back  on  certain  magic 
nights  at  Oxford  and  re-read  these  pages  in  the  light  of  their 
memory,  I  realise  how  halting  they  are  compared  to  the  things 
they  would  have  said.  But  I  take  it  that  for  them  the  one 
justification  of  this  conffict  would  have  been  the  thought  that 
we  who  are  left  are  trying  in  some  sort  to  understand  the 
problems  of  the  state  they  died  to  make  free.  To  have  known 
them  was  an  education  in  liberty. 

Lastly,  as  also  firstly,  every  page  of  this  book  has  in  it  the 
help  my  wife  has  given  me.  But  to  do  more  than  mention  that 
is  unnecessary  for  either  of  us. 

HAROLD  J.  LASKL 

April  21,  1918. 

Harvard  University. 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  One:    AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE 

I.  The  Origins  of  the  Modern  State 

II.  State  and  Government 

III.  The  Nature  of  Obedience 

IV.  The  Limitations  of  Power 
V.  The  Attack  on  the  Secular  State 

''  W.  The  Division  of  Power 

Vn.  The  Organisation  of  Power 

VIII.  The  Significance  of  Freedom 

IX.  The  Direction  of  Events 

X.  Conclusion 


Chapter  Two:     BONALD 

I.  The  Implication  of  Theocracy 

II.  The  Basis  of  Traditionalism 

III.  The  Political  Theory  of  Bonald  ,  . 

IV.  The  Attack  on  the  Individual 
V.  Implications  of  the  Attack    . 

^  VI.  The  Religious  Aspect  of  the  State 

u  VII.  Criticisms  .... 

VIII.  The  Revival  of  Traditionalism 

IX.  The  Traditionalism  of  M.  Brunetiere 

X.  The  Traditionalism  of  M.  Bourget 

XI.  The  Significance  of  Variety 

Chapter  Three:     LAMENNAIS 

I.  The  Problem  of  Lamennais 

II.  The  Church  in  the  Napoleonic  Age 

III.  Early  Ultramontanism 

IV.  The  Glorification  of  Rome    . 
i   V.  The  Attack  on  the  Secular  State 

VI.  The  Transition  to  Liberalism 

VII.  The  Foundation  of  L'Avenir 

\lll.  The  Appeal  to  Rome    . 

IX.  The  Condemnation 

X.  The  Red  Cap  on  the  Cross   . 


16 

CONTENTS 

XL 

Implications         ..... 

.       259 

XII. 

The  Inheritance             .... 

267 

XIII. 

Conclusion           ..... 

280 

Chapter  Four:     ROYER-COLLARD 

I. 

The  Significance  of  the  Restoration 

281 

II. 

The  Theory  of  the  Charter  . 

287 

.III. 

Necessary  Freedoms     .          .          ,          . 

293 

IV. 

Implications        ..... 

301 

V. 

Ethics  and  Politics       .... 

310 

Chaptek 

Five:     ADMINISTRATIVE  SYNDICALISM  IN 

FRANCE 

I 

The  Right  of  Association 

321 

II. 

The  Complaints  of  the  Civil  Service 

326 

III. 

The  Claims  of  the  Civil  Service     . 

.       336 

IV. 

Implications         ..... 

.       342 

V. 

The  Attack  of  the  Jurists 

.       353 

VI. 

The  Attack  of  the  Politicians 

.       365 

VII. 

The  Movement  Towards  Reform 

376 

Appendix:     NOTE    ON    THE    BIBLIOGRAPHY    OF    LA- 
MENNAIS  .  .  .  .388 


Index 


391 


AUTHORITY  IN 
THE  MODERN  STATE 


CHAPTER  ONE 

AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE 

I.   THE  ORIGINS  OF  THE  MODERN  STATE 

MAN  is  a  community-building,  animal :  it  is  by  reverent 
contact  with  Aristotle's  fundamental  observation  that 
every  political  discussion  must  now  begin.  We  start 
with  the  one  compulsory  form  of  human  association — the  state — 
as  the  centre  of  analysis.  Yet  there  are  few  subjects  upon 
which  enquiry  is  so  greatly  needed  as  upon  the  mechanisms 
by  which  it  lives.  Outside  our  state-context  we  are,  after  all, 
largely  uninteUigible,  must  be,  as  Aristotle  so  scornfully  pro- 
claimed, beasts  or  gods  who  defy  interpretation.  Even  in 
birth  we  inherit  the  qualities  of  unnumbered  generations  so 
that  a  bias  is  present  before  ever  it  has  obtained  expression. 
This  emphasis  upon  state-life  has  become  more  vital  as  the 
scale  of  existence  has  become  progressively  greater.  To  the 
unity  of  interdependence,  at  least,  the  world  has  been  reduced, 
so  that,  today,  the  whim  of  a  New  York  milUonaire  may  well 
affect  the  lives  of  thousands  in  the  cotton-mills  of  Bombay.^ 
Not  that  state-history  can  in  any  adequate  sense  be  made 
the  biography  of  great  men.  We  can  even  less  today  accept 
the  epic-theory  of  Carlyle  than  that  so  characteristically  con- 
tributed by  Bolingbroke  to  Voltaire  when  he  found  in  the 
interplay  of  personal  fantasy  the  true  source  of  events.  Not, 
of  course,  that  history  will  ever  be  an  exact  science  in  the 
sense  that  exactness  belongs  to  mathematical  enquiry.  It  is 
only  magnificent  sciolists  like  Machiavelli  who  dare  to  look 
upon  history  as  an  endless  cycle.  For  most  it  will  mainly 
be  what  Thucydides  strove  to  make  of  it — the  great  store- 
house of  political  wisdom.  For  all  history  that  is  not  merely 
annalistic  must  lead  to  the  formulation  of  conclusions.  It  has 
in  it  the  full  materials  for  a  state-philosophy  simply  because 

1  G.  Wallas,  "The  Great  Society,"  p.  3  f. 


20  AUTHORITY  IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

the  evidence  we  possess  so  largely  relates  to  political  life. 
From  Aristotle  down  to  our  own  time  the  one  constant  eJRfort 
has  been  the  determination  of  the  conditions  upon  which  that 

^  life  should  be  lived.  And,  where  the  effort  has  been  most 
"fruitful,  it  has  been  induction  from  experience.  Systems  have 
helped  us  little  enough.  The  vague  ideal  of  a  revolution,  the 
chance  phrase  of  an  orator,  the  incisive  induction  of  some 
thinker  more  deeply-seeing  than  the  rest — it  is  upon  these 
that,  for  the  most  part,  our  creeds  have  been  builded.  The 
sources  of  our  principles  are  as  varied  as  human  experience 
simply  because  there  has,  from  the  outset,  been  no  large  tract 
of  human  life  with  which  the  state  has  not  concerned  itself. 

Certainly  the  state  has  about  it  the  majesty  of  history;  and 
it  is  old  enough  to  make  its  present  substance  seem  permanent 
to  the  mass  of  men.  It  has  become  so  integral  a  part  of  our 
lives  that  the  fact  of  its  evolution  is  no  longer  easy  to  re- 
member.2  It  has  almost  passed  beyond  the  region  where 
criticism  may  enter  by  reason  of  the  very  greatness  of  its 

^mission.     Aristotle's  formula  for  the  expression  of  its  purpose 

'  has  lent  it  a  great,  if  specious  aid.  The  realisation  of  indi- 
vidual virtue  in  the  common  good^  is  a  conception  fine  enough, 

^^  in  all  conscience,  to  suffuse  with  a  glamour  of  which  the  treach- 
ery is  too  late  discovered  the  processes  by  which  it  moves  along 
its  way.  The  conception  is  yet  inadequate  becaase  it  fails  to 
particularise  those  upon  whom  it  is  intended  that  benefit  shall 
be  conferred.  Aristotle  himself  had  certainly  what  the  modern 
age  would  regard  as  an  impossibly  narrow  conception  of  citizen- 
ship f  and  Plato's  virtue  is  so  confined  to  the  special  experiences 
to  which  it  is  annexed  as  to  limit  to  but  few  the  full  enjoyment 
of  capacities.^    The  nature  of  the  state,  moreover,  has  become 

^  A  book  that  would  do  on  the  grand  scale  what  Mr.  Edward  Jenks  so 
briUiantly  attempted  in  his  "Short  History  of  Politics"  is  badly  needed; 
but  it  would  need  the  learning  of  Lord  Acton  combined  with  the  large 
vision  of  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  to  write  it. 

»Cf.  T.  H.  Green,  "  Collected  Works,"  Vol.  II,  pp.  550-1. 

^"Pohtics,"  II,  5.  12G4b. 

^  Cf.  the  admirable  remarks  of  Mr.  Barker  in  his  "I'oUtical  Thought 
of  Plato  and  Aristotle,"  p.  113.  I  think  his  argument  is  even  more  strongly 
reinforced  when  the  attcmjjt  of  the  Meno  to  specialise  apery]  into  a  purely 
functional  quality  is  remembered. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  21 

so  intimately  involved  with  that  of  society  that  we  tend,  like 
Hegel,  to  speak  of  it  less  in  terms  of  logic  than  of  rhapsody.^ 

Yet  the  very  fact  that  it  has  a  history  should  surely  make 
us  cautious.  The  state  is  no  unchanging  organisation.  It  is 
hardly  today  either  in  purpose  or  in  method  what  it  was  to  the 
Greek  philosophers,  or  to  the  theologians  of  the  medieval  time. 
The  medieval  state  is  a  church;  and  the  differentiation  of  civil 
from  religious  function  is  a  matter  of  no  slight  difficulty.'  In 
the  form  in  which  it  becomes  immediately  recognisable  to  our- 
selves the  modern  state  is,  clearly  enough,  the  offspring  of  the 
Reformation,  and  it  bears  upon  its  body  the  tragic  scars  of 
that  mighty  conflict.  What  it  is,  it  has  essentially  become  by 
virtue  of  the  experience  it  has  encountered.  Upon  its  face  is 
written  large  the  effort  of  great  thmkers  to  account  for  the 
unique  claims  it  has  made  upon  the  loyalties  of  men.  Nor  is 
their  thought  less  clearly  present,  even  if  it  be  but  by  impli- 
cation, in  the  policy  of  those  who  have  directed  political 
destinies. 

The  modern  state,  we  urge,  is  the  outcome  of  the  religious- 
struggle  of  the  sixteenth  century;  or,  at  least,  it  is  from  that 
crisis  that  it  derives  the  qualities  today  most  especially  its  own. 
The  notion  of  a  single  and  universal  authority  commensurate- 
with  the  bounds  of  social  life  was  utterly  destroyed  when  Luther 
appealed  to  the  princes  in  the  interests  of  religious  reform. 
External  unity  was  destroyed  to  be  replaced  by  a  system  of 
separate  unities  and  the  weapon  of  divine  right  was  the  instru- 
ment he  forged  to  that  end.^  What,  virtually,  he  did  was  to 
assume  the  sacredness  of  power,  and  thus,  by  implication,  the 
eternal  rightness  of  its  purposes.  He  builded  better  than  he 
knew.     The  religious   disruption  synchronised  with  the  full 

«  Cf .  "  Philosophy  of  Right "  (trans.  Dyde),  p.  278.  The  very  brilliant 
paper  of  Mr.  Bosanquet  printed  in  the  International  Crisis,  p.  132  f., 
hardly  speaks  a  different  language.  Cf.  also  the  amazing  citation  from 
Sir  Henry  Jones  in  J.  A.  Hobson,  "Democracy  after  the  War,"  p.  118. 

^  As  Dr.  Figgis  has  very  brilliantly  shown,  "  Churches  in  the  Modern 
State,"  Appendix  B. 

^  Or  perhaps  rediscovered.  The  political  theory  of  the  early  fathers 
never,  of  course,  dissented  from  the  sacredness  of  secular  power.  It  is  only 
in  the  excitement  of  the  investure  controversy  that  its  indirect  derivation 
began  to  be  seriously  urged. 


22  AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

realisation  of  national  consciousness  in  Western  Europe,  and 
the  modern  state  is  clearly  visible  as  a  territorial  society  divided 
into  government  and  subjects.  The  great  preamble  to  the 
Statute  of  Appeals^ — the  one  statutory  example  of  Enghsh 
Byzantinism — is  no  more  than  official  announcement  that  the 
Enghsh  state  permits  no  question  of  Henry's  complete  sover- 
eignty. Government,  for  the  most  part,  was  roysd ;  for  over  the 
free  towns  of  Germany,  and  the  Italian  cities,  was  cast  the  du- 
bious cloak  of  imperial  suzerainty,  Holland  had  not  yet  arisen 
to  suggest  the  problems  of  a  sovereign  republic. 

But  state  and  society  are  not  yet  equated.  That  is  the  work 
of  the  thinkers  of  the  Counter- Reformation.  The  church  might, 
as  in  England,  assume  a  national  form;  but  rehgious  difference 
went  deep  enough  to  limit  state-absorptiveness.  France  learned 
a  partial  toleration  from  the  misery  of  civil  war;  and  almost  a 
century  of  social  and  economic  confusion  was  necessary  before 
Germany  took  a  similar  road.  Not  that  this  early  toleration  is 
at  all  complete;  it  is  bcrn  too  painfully  for  that.  It  is,  at  most, 
the  sense  of  the  French  politiques  that  the  state  must  not  perish 
for  religion's  sake.  It  admits  the  impossibility  of  maldng  men 
sacrifice  their  consciences  upon  a  single  altar.  The  task  of  con- 
viction was  no  easy  one,  and  the  lesson  was  only  partially  learned. 
Europe,  in  what  at  least  the  medieval  thinkers  deemed  most 
fundamental,  had  become  accustomed  to  unity  of  outlook. 
Unity  of  outlook  was  secured  by  reference  of  power  to  a  single 
centre.  The  partition  of  Western  civilisation  into  a  medley  of 
religious  systems  developed  problems  of  the  first  importance. 
A  man  might  owe  allegiance  to  Rome  in  one  set  of  opinions  and 
to  London  in  another.  He  might  think  as  Pius  V  bade  him  in 
matter  of  transubstantiation,  and  in  those  great  political  ques- 
tions of  1588  take  the  fleet  into  the  English  channel  against  the 
papally-approved  might  of  Spain.  Your  Catholic  might  be  a 
member  of  the  English  state,  but  there  was  always,  for  him  a 
power  outside.  For  some,  it  might  preside  over  all  indirectly;^" 
for  others  it  might  only  in  its  own  sphere  be  supreme.  But, 
where   conflict  came,  men    like  Parsons  would   show  that  to 

9  25  H.  VIII,  c.  19. 

^o  As  the  Jesuits  argued.  Cf.  Figgis,  "From  Gerson  to  Grotius"  (2d  ed.), 
p.  203  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  23 

attack  the  state  was  not  an  onslaught  on  the  fabric  of  society." 
•  Thus,  from  the  outset  of  its  modern  history,  the  problem  is 
raised  as  to  the  authority  to  be  possessed  by  the  state.  Not 
Romanists  alone  doubt  Its  absoluteness.  Archbishop  Whitgift 
set  the  keynote  to  the  temper  that  is  turned  into  theory.  He 
was  by  nature  inapt  to  grasp  the  niceties  of  political  meta- 
physics, and  a  Presbyterian  theory  which,  like  that  of  Cart- 
wright,  struck  at  the  root  of  state-omnipotence  aroused  him  to 
fierce  anger.  ^^  From  the  threshold  of  the  seventeenth  century 
what  the  state  demands  is  the  whole  of  man's  allegiance  lest, 
in  seeking  less,  it  should  obtain  nothing.  James  I  had  at  least 
a  logician's  mind.  Aiming  at  supreme  power  for  the  state  he 
deemed  himself  to  personify,  he  could  not  doubt  that  Presby- 
terian structure  was  subversive  of  his  whole  position.  If  the 
ultimate  seat  of  authority  were  not  with  himself,  he  seemed 
already  on  the  threshold  of  anarchy.  The  only  difference  be- 
tween Parliament  and  the  Stuarts  was  as  to  the  place  in  which 
that  supreme  power  resided;  and  Parhament  made  the  Civil 
War  the  proof  of  its  hypothesis.  Hobbes  only  got  his  volume 
printed  under  the  Commonwealth  because  it  conveniently 
applied  to  any  form  of  despotism. 

The  medieval  worship  of  unity,^^  in  fact,  is  inherited  by  the 
modern  state;  and  what  changes  in  the  four  centuries  of  its 
modern  history  is  simply  the  place  in  which  the  controlling 
factor  of  unity  is  to  be  found.  To  the  Papacy  it  seemed  clear 
in  medieval  times  that  the  power  to  bind  and  loose  had  given 
it  an  authority  without  hmit  or  question.  The  modern  state 
inherits  the  papal  prerogative.  It  must,  then,  govern  all;  and 
to  govern  all  there  must  be  no  hmit  to  the  power  of  those  instru- 
ments by  which  it  acts.  Catholic  and  Nonconformist  are  alike 
excluded  from  citizenship  simply  because  they  denied,  as  it 
deemed,  the  fulness  of  state  authority.  They  refuse  absorption 
by  its  instruments,  and  the  penalty  of  refusal  is  exclusion.'^    The 

"  Cf .  Prof.  Mcllwain's  brilliant  introduction  to  his  edition  of  the  "Political 
Works  of  James  I"  (Harvard  University  Press,  1918). 

12  Strype,  "Life  of  Whitgift,"  II,  22  ff. 

'3  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  2. 

"  This  is  what  Mr.  Seaton,  in  his  admirable  book,  calls  the  second  stage 
of  religious  persecution.    "Toleration  under  the  Later  Stuarts,"  p.  6  f. 


24         AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

representatives  of  the  state  must  be  sovereign,  and  if  the  Stuarts 
abuse  their  prerogative,  the  result  is,  not  its  Hmitation  but  its 
transference  to  Parhament.  Always  the  stern  logic  of  theory 
seems  to  imply  that  the  dominating  institution  is  absolute. 
Locke,  indeed,  saw  deeper,  and  argued  to  a  state  that  thought 
it  had  already  won  its  freedom  that  power  must  be  limited  by 
its  service  to  the  purposes  it  is  intended  to  accomplish. ^^  But 
the  accident  of  foreign  rule  gave  that  power  a  basis  in  what 
could,  relatively  at  least  to  continental  fact,  be  termed  popular 
consent.  Thenceforth  the  sovereignty  of  Parliament  became 
the  fundamental  dogma  of  English  constitutionalism.  With- 
out, there  might  be  the  half  articulate  control  of  public  opimon; 
but  that,  as  Rousseau  said,^^  was  free  only  at  election  time.  Its 
control  was  essentially  a  reserve-power,  driven  to  action  only  at 
moments  of  decisive  crisis.  "A  supreme,  irresistible,  uncontrol- 
lable authority,  in  which  the  jura  summa  imperii  or  rights  of 
sovereignty  reside""  is,  as  Blackstone  says,  the  legal  theory 
which  Ues  at  the  root  of  the  English  State.  For  practical  pur- 
poses, that  is  to  say,  the  sovereignty  of  the  English  state  means 
the  sovereignty  of  the  King  in  Parliament. ^^ 

France  travelled  more  slowly,  but,  always,  it  was  in  the  same 
direction  she  was  travelling.  Her  earliest  political  speculation 
was,  as  Bodin  bears  witness,  already  of  a  sovereign  state;  and 
it  is,  as  he  emphasises,  a  state  which  boasts  a  royal  organ  to 
declare  its  sovereign  purposes.  Bossuet  makes  it  clear  that  the 
centralising  efforts  of  her  three  great  ministers  had  not  been 
vain;  and  it  was  not  merely  Voltaire's  acid  humor  that  made 
him  equate  the  sovereignty  of  France  with  the  will  of  Louis  XIV. 
But,  sooner  or  later,  abuse  involves  disruption.  The  atmos- 
phere of  the  eighteenth  century  was  not  favourable  to  the 
retention  of  a  belief  in  divinities.  The  profound  speculation  of 
Montesquieu,  the  unanswerable  questions  of  Rousseau,  herald 
a  transference  of  power  similar  to  that  of  England.  The  people 
becomes  master  in  its  own  house,  and  the  dogma  of  national 

"  Second  treatise,  Ch.  XI,  Sec.  14  f. 
16  "Contrat  Social,"  Bk.  Ill,  Ch.  XV. 
1'  Comm.  I,  48. 

1'  I  think  this  would  express,  somewhat  differently,  the  point  made  by 
Professor  Dicey  in  the  famous  first  chapter  of  his  "Law  of  the  Constitution." 


AJtLJTJELQ-BJLJX-Y    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  25 

>«T.     -    ,  I.        I- — »- ^___ 

sovereignty  becomes  the  corner  stone  of  the  reconstructed 
edifice.^*  But  as  in  England,  the  sovereign  people  is  too  large 
for  continuous  action.  Its  powers  become  delegated  to  the 
complex  of  institutions  we  call  government.  Thenceforth,  for 
general  purposes,  it  is  through  this  channel  that  the  state-will 
is  expressed.  Parliament  is  the  nation,  and  its  sovereignty  is 
there  given  adequate  fulfil ment.^"  Only  on  rare  occasions,  as 
in  1830  and  in  1848,  is  there  sign  of  clear  dissent  from  govern- 
mental purposes.  Only  then,  that  is  to  say,  can  we  argue  a 
revocation  of  powers. 

Nor  is  American  evolution  at  all  different,  though  here  there 
are  more  checks  upon  the  exercise  of  the  governmental  power.^^ 
The  people  is  ultimately  sovereign  in  the  sense  that,  sooner  or 
later,  it  may,  through  proper  reforms,  or,  in  the  last  resort, 
through  revolution,  get  itself  obeyed.  There  is  no  immediately 
sovereign  body,  as  in  England  or  in  France.  Certain  limitations 
upon  state  and  federal  government  are  taken  as  fundamental 
and  continuous  expressions  of  popular  desire;  and  the  rights 
thus  enshrined  in  the  constitution  it  is  the  business  of  the 
Supreme  Court  to  maintain.  Yet,  even  here,  it  is,  for  most 
purposes,  a  governmental  will  that  we  at  each  moment  en- 
counter. The  problem  of  authority  may  ultimately  resolve 
itself  into  a  question  of  what  a  section  of  the  American  people, 
strong  enough  to  get  its  will  enforced,  may  desire.^^  But  such 
continuous  resolve  as  the  business  of  state  daily  requires  one 
hundred  million  people  cannot  directly  undertake.  What  here 
becomes  essential  is  the  device  of  representation.  Sovereignty, 
therefore,  in  America,  as  elsewHere,  is  the  acts  of  government 
as  the  people  and  the  Supreme  Court  acquiesce  in  their  enforce- 
ment. The  multiplicity  of  governmental  powers  demanded  by 
the  federal  system  makes  no  difference ;   it  is  merely  a  question 

i«  Cf.  the  suggestive  brochure  of  Hauriou,  "DuSouveraineteNationale." 

2"  The  reader  can  get  a  clear  idea  of  this  article  by  comparing  the  speeches 
of  M.  Barthou,  March  19,  1909;  of  M.  Ribot,  May  14,  1907;  of  M. 
Deschonel,  May  2d,  1907;  and  of  M.  Clemenceau,  March  13,  1908— all 
in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  I  have  discussed  them  below  in  the  chapter 
on  administrative  syndicalism. 

21  Cf.  the  interesting  remarks  of  Boutmy,  "Studies  in  Constitutional 
Law"  (trans.  Dicey),  p.  159  f. 

^"^  As  in  the  Civil  War. 


26  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

of  administrative  convenience.  The  fundamental  fact  is  that 
when  we  speak  of  acts  done  by  America  the  actor  is  a  govern- 
ment of  which  the  subjects  are  more  or  less  inert  instruments. 
In  that  sense  American  evolution,  though  superficially  different 
in  form  is,  in  substantial  character,  similar  to  the  development 
of  the  European  system. 

II.  STATE  AND  GOVERNMENT 

It  is,  then,  with  a  sovereign  state  that  we  are  today  confronted. 
For  its  fundamental  agents,  that  is  to  say,  there  is  claimed  a 
power  from  which  no  appeal  is  to  be  made.  The  attributes  of 
sovereignty  have  been  admirably  described  by  Paley.  Its 
power,  he  says,^^  "may  be  termed  absolute,  omnipotent,  uncon- 
trollable, arbitrary,  despotic,  and  is  alike  so  in  all  countries." 
Limitation  of  any  kind  it  does  not  therefore  admit;  it  acts  as 
it  deems  adequate  to  its  purposes.  But  the  state,  of  course, 
may  assume  a  variety  of  forms.  It  may,  as  in  the  France  of  the 
ancien  regime,  be  an  absolute  monarchy.  It  may,  as  in  the 
England  of  the  eighteenth  century,  be  a  narrow  oligarchy,  or, 
as  in  modern  America,  its  form  may  be  democratic.  The  sub- 
stance of  the  state,  however,  does  not  so  vary.  It  is  always  a 
territorial  society  in  which  there  is  a  distinction  between  gov- 
ernment and  subjects.  The  question  of  form  must,  of  course, 
affect  the  question  of  substance;  but  its  real  reference  is,  in 
fact,  to  the  prevailing  type  of  government.  That  is,  in  part,  a 
question  of  those  who  share  in  power;  in  part,  also,  a  question 
of  the  basis  upon  which  responsibility  is  to  rest.  \ 

Such  a  definition  excludes  the  equation  of  state  with  society. 
The  exclusion  is  made  because  there  are  obviously  social  rela- 
tionships which  can  not  be  expressed  through  the  state.  It  may 
be  true  that  man's  nature  is  determined  by  the  environment 
in  which  he  lives,  but  that  environment  is  not  merely  a  state- 
creation.  No  one  would  claim  in  England,  for  example,  that 
the  Roman  Catholic  church  is  a  part  of  the  state;  but  it  is  yet 
obvious  that  it  acts  upon  its  members  as  a  social  determinant. 
The  family  is  an  institution  of  society,  and  no  one  will  doubt 
that  the  state  may  affect  it;  but  it  is  not  merely  a  part  of  the 
state.     The  state  is  concerned  only  with  those  social  relations 

«  "Moral  and  Political  Philosophy,"  Bk.  VI,  Ch.  VI. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  27 

that  express  themselves  by  means  of  government.^'*  That  is  not 
to  say  that  the  province  of  the  government  may  not  be  wide; 
and,  indeed,  as  at  Geneva  under  Calvin,  there  may  be  almost 
no  element  in  Ufe  with  which  it  may  not  attempt  to  concern 
itself.  But  immediately  it  is  perceived  that  there  are  relation- 
ships that  in  fact  escape  its  purview,  it  becomes  obvious  thaft" 
the  state  is  only  a  species  of  a  larger  genus,  and  the  nature  of 
its  especial  problems  begins  to  emerge.  For  churches,  trade- 
unions,  and  a  thousand  other  associations  are  all  societies.  They 
refuse  absorption  by  the  state  and  thereby  raise,  sometimes  in 
acute  form,  the  definition  of  their  connexion  with  it.  Churches, 
certainly,  have  denied  to  the  state  any  absolute  sovereignty; 
by  which  they  mean  that  the  canons  of  their  life  are  not  subject 
to  the  control  of  its  instruments.^^  Trade-unions  have  been 
hardly  less  defiant.  The  state,  indeed,  has  rarely  hesitated  to 
claim  paramount  authority,  even  if,  on  the  occasions  of  conflict, 
it  has  not  been  overwhelmingly  successf uL^j  The  claim  is 
naturally  important ;  but,  manifestly,  if  it  has  not,  in  the  event, 
been  able  to  prove  itself,  it  demands  more  rigid  enquiry. 

It  makes  clear,,,  however,  the  point  upon  which  insistence 
must  be  laid.  )  Whatever_power  the-state  may  assume,  we  have  . 
always  its  division  into  a  smalTnumber  who  exert  active  power, 
and  a^targer  number  who,  for  the  most  part,  acquiesce  in  the 
decisions  that  are  made.-^  /  Obviously,  of  course,  the  fact  of 
acquiescence  is  vital;  -foTHume  long  ago  made  it  a  common- 
place that  ultimate  power  is  always  on  the  side  of  the  governed.^* 
The  fact  of  power  may  be  most  variously  justified.     Divine 

^*  Mr.  Cole,  indeed,  actually  defines  the  state  in  terms  of  government 
only  ("Self -Government  in  Industry,"  p.  70  f.),  but  though  this  is  a  result 
largely  true  it  seems  to  me,  for  reasons  explained  below,  the  second  and 
not  the  first  state  of  the  process. 

25  Cf.  Hansard,  4th  Series,  Vol.  115,  Sep.  2d,  1902,  p.  1014.  Mr.  Perks, 
"The  question  whether  a  Nonconformist  will  be  justified  or  not  in  resisting 
the  rate  is  a  matter  for  each  individual  conscience,  and  having  settled 
that  question  for  himself,  we  will  not  be  likely  to  be  influenced  in  the 
slightest  degree  by  the  fact  that  he  may  lose  his  right  as  a  citizen." 

2^  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  Chs.  II-V  for  some  instances. 

"  Cf.  Duguit,  "L'Etat:  Le  Droit  Objectif,"  pp.  242-54. 

^*  "Essays:  of  the  First  Principles  of  Government"  (World's  Classics  td., 
p.  29). 


28  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

right,  utility,  or  social  contract  are  all  methods  that  have  on 
occasten  been  used  to  demonstrate  legitimacy.  What,  in  gen- 
eral, we  assume  is  an  identity  of  interest  between  government 
and  subjects.  IWe  lend  to  government  the  authority  of  the  state 
upon  the  basis  of  a  conviction  that  its  will  is  a  will  effecting  the 
purpose  for  which  the  state  was  foundejj  The  state,  we 
broadly  say,  exists  to  promote  the  good  life^  however  variously 
defined;  and  we  give  government  the  power  to  act  for  the  pro- 
motion of  that  life.  Its  acts,  then,  in  our  view,  are  coloured  by 
the  motives  that  lie  behind  it.  It  wins  our  loyalty  by  the  con- 
tribution it  can  make  to  the  achievement  of  the  state-purpose. 
____We_can,  then,  distinguish  between  state  and  government. 
Rousseau  quite  clearly^grasped  this  difference.  The  state,  for 
him,  was  the  collective  moral  person  formed  by  the  whole  body 
of  citizens;  the  government  was  merely  an  executive  organ  by 
which  the  state-will  could  be  carried  into  effect.^^ ;  He  realised 
the  clear  possibility  of  disparity  of  effort.  A  government  that 
sought  to  usurp  power  for  selfish  ends  has  norBeen  unknown; 
and  Rousseau  therefore  reserved  sovereignty — for  him  the 
ultimate  right  to  do  anything — for  the  state  alone.^''  Power 
was  "authority  that  had  not  yet  been  dignified  by  moral  attri- 
butes; and  that  alone  the  government  possessed  until  judgment 
of  its  motives  had  been  made.^^  Where  he  went  wrong  was  in 
his  effort  to  ascribe  a  necessarily  beneficent  will  to  the  state 
itself — a  view  that,  largely  dependent  as  it  was  upon  his  identi- 
fication of  state  and  society — was  in  reality  no  more  than  an 
a  priori  assumption.^^  There  is  no  will  that  is  good  merely  by 
self -definition;  it  is  actual  substantiation  in  terms  of  the  event 
that  alone  can  be  accepted  as  valid.  To  introduce,  as  he  did, 
a  distinction  between  the  "general"  will  and  the  "will  of  all," 
is,  in  reality,  simply  to  take  refuge  in  mysticism.  A  will  that 
fulfils  the  purpose  of  the  state  is,  of  course,  good  where  the  end 
of  the  state  is,  by  definition^good  also ;  but  that  is  a  question 
of  fact  upon  which  opinions  may  differ.  What  Herbert  Spencer 
thought  for  the  good  of  the  state  Professor  Huxley  dismissed  as 
"  "Contrat  Social,"  Bk.  Ill,  Ch.  1. 

30  Ibid.,  Bk.  Ill,  Ch.  X. 

31  Cf.  Ibid.,  Bk.  Ill,  Chs.  XVI  and  XVIII. 

32  Cf.  the  admirable  appendix  in  Professor  Maciver's  recent  volume, 
"Community,"  p.  413  f. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  29 

administrative  nihilism.  Numbers,  certainly,  even  to  the  point 
of  unanimity,  make  no  difference.  They  may  justify  political 
action;  but  they  will  provide  no  guaranty  of  its  Tightness. 
Since  Rousseau  wrote,  moreover,  a  new  complication  has  been 
introduced  in  the  problem  of  size.  In  the  Greek  city-state,  in 
Geneva,  in  the  republic  of  Andorra,  it  was  comparatively  easy 
to  discover  an  effective  popular  opinion;  today,  as  John 
Chipman  Gray  so  admirably  said,  the  real  rulers  of  a  society 
are  undiscoverable.  The  new  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
may  be  dependent  upon  a  permanent  official  whose  very  name 
is  unknowTi  to  the  vast  majority  whose  destinies  he  may  so 
largely  shape;  and,  indeed,  the  position  of  the  English  civil- 
servant  has  been  defined  as  that  of  a  man  who  has  exchanged 
dignity  for  power.  Public  opinion  may  be  the  ultimate  con- 
trolling factor;  but  not  the  least  complex  of  our  problems  is, 
as  Mr.  Lowell  has  said,^^  to  discover  when  it  is  public  and  when 
it  is  opinion. 

Accepted  theory  tells  us  that  the  state  is  sovereign.  It  is, 
that  is  to  say,  the'supreme  embodiment  of  power.  What  its 
will  has  determined  it  has  the  right  to  enforce.  Yet  in  the  only 
sense  in  which  this  is  an  acceptable  theory,  it  in  reality  tells  us 
nothing.  The  state  exists  as  the  most  adequate  means  we  have 
yet  invented  for  the  promotion  of  an  end  we  deem  good.  If  by 
the  emphasis  of  its  sovereignty  we  mean  that  it  must  be  obeyed, 
the  thesis  is  self-evident  when  its  act  is  in  accordance  with  that 
end;  but  no  qnej^urely,  would  urge  that  the  state  must  be-. 
obeyed  if  the  methods  itTbllowed  were  those  of  Machiavelli's 
prince.  How  are  we,  save  by  individual  judgment,  to  tell  if  the^ 
state-act  is  in  truth  the  adequate  expression  of  right  purpose? 
Rousseau  resolved  the  difficulty  by  making  his  state  call  fre- 
quent meetings  of  its  citizens  and  assuming  Tightness  where 
moral  unanimity  was  secured.^*  Yet  there  are  few  who  have 
lived  through  this  age  of  blood  and  iron  who  will  be  willing  to 
attribute  infallibility  even  to  an  unanimous  people.  Nor  does 
Rousseau  meet  the  difficulty  that,  in  sober  fact,  the  modern 
state  cannot  function  save  by  selecting  certain  of  its  members 
for  the  fulfilment  of  its  task;  and  that  selection  means  that  our 

"  "Public  Opinion  and  Popular  Government,"  Part  One. 
"  "Contrat  Social,"  Bk.  Ill,  Ch.  XVIII. 


30  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

obedience,  in  reality,  goes  to  a  government  of  which  we  accept, 
for  the  most  part,  the  decisions.  But^^ew^who  accept  on  the 
ground  of  high  purpose  the  sovereignty  of  the  state  will  urge 
that  government  is  similarly  sovereign.  The  difference  of  funda- 
mental moral  emphasis  may  well  be  vital. 
/     To  postulate  the  sovereignty  of  the  state,  therefore,  is  hardly 

lA  helpful  unless  we  know  two  things.  ^We  need,  in  the  first  place, 
to  enquire  by  what  criteria  the  consent  of  the  state  to  some 

V,    course  of  governmental  action  is  to  be  inferred.    We  need  also  to- 
^    have  information  as  to  the  coincidence  of  the  action  with  what 
is  termed  right  conduct]    But  it  is  surely  obvious  that  these- 
criteria  and  this  information  are,  in  fact,  established  by  each 
one  of  us.    No  matter  what  the  influence  which  constrains  us 
to  refusal  or  acceptance  it  is,  at  bottom,  an  individual  act  of 
will.    The  real  basis  of  law,  therefore,  is  somehow  in  the  indi- 
vidual mind.    Our  attitude  to  it  may  be  most  variously  deter- 
mined.   An  Irish  peasant  of  the  seventies  may  have  gone  moon- 
lighting less  from  an  opinion  that  violence  alone  would  teach 
the  British  government  its  lesson  than  from  a  fear  of  local  dis- 
approval.   But,  politically,  we  can  be  concerned  not  with  the, 
hidden  motives  but  with  the  overt  acts  of  men.  Ciji  that  sense 

1/  the  basis  of  the  state  is  clearly  a  reservoir  of  individuahsm  be- 
cause each  will  is  something  that  ultimately  is  self-determined. 
What  determines  it  to  act  is  a  different  and  far  more  complex 
question;  but  there  is  never  in  the  state  an  a  priori  certainty 
that  a  government  act  will  be  obeyed!]  The  possibility  of  an^ 
archy  is  theoretically  at  every  moment  present.  Why  it  is 
rarely  operative  demands  more  detailed  investigation. 

realistic  analysis  of  the  modern  state  thus  suggests  that 
what  we  term  state-action  is,  in  actual  fact,  action  by  govern- 
ment.    It  is  a  policy  offered  to  the  people  for  its  acceptance. 
i^     It  becomes  state-action  when  that  acceptance  is  predominantly 

>  operative.  The  passive  resistance  of  the  Nonconformists  to 
Mr.  Balfour's  Education  Act,  for  example,  was  not  sufficient  to 
make  the  Act  void.  It  was  able  to  be  put  into  operation  and 
was  therefore  accepted  by  the  English  state.  There  have,  of 
course,  been  periods  when  this  twofold  stage  of  political  action 
was  only  partially  necessary.  The  Greek  city-state  acted  not 
by  means  of  representative  government  but,  at  least  in  certain 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  31 

periods  of  its  history,  by  the  voice  of  its  whole  citizen-body. 
It  thus  fulfilled  Rousseau's  ideal  of  a  continuous  exerci^-ef 
sovereign  power.  But  that  can  no  longer  be  the  case.  '  The 
modern  state,  for  good  or  ill,  has  outgrown  the  possibility  of 
government  by  public  meeting,  and  it  is  upon  some  system 
of  representation  that  rehance  must  be  placed.^^;  The  repre- 
sentative organ  is,  directly  or  indirectly,  go'^e'rnment.  -Stale- L 
action,  in  such  analysis,  is  simply  an  act  of  government  which 
commands  general  acceptance.  This  M.  Esmein  has  clearly 
perceived.  "Although",  he  says,^^  "the  legislative  power  is  the 
true  regulator  of  sovereignty,  it  is  above  all  by  the  executive 
power,  that  its  action  is  felt  by  the  citizen  body."  Such  a  theory 
has  at  least  the  merit  of  fitting  the  actual  facts.  It  makes  no 
moral  presumptions.  It  takes  account  of  the  fact  that  the  state 
as  a  whole  may  repudiate,  as  in  1688,  the  acts  of  its  representa- 
tives for  reasons  that  it  deems  good.  It  admits,  what  the  situ- 
ation itself  compels  us  to  admit,  that  the  exercise  of  authority, 
whether  we  call  it  power  or  sovereignty  or  what  we  will,  is,  in  the 
vast  majority  of  cases,  in  the  hands  of  government. 

In  such  an  aspect,  several  results  are  immediately  obvious. 
An  adequate  theory  of  the  state  must  examine  not  so  much  the 
claims  of  authority  but  their  actual  vahdation  in  terms  of  prac- 
tice. Its  assumptions  are  naturally  important;  but  it  is  rather 
as  an  a  priori  index  to  achievement  than  as  a  definitive  measure 
of  it  that  they  must  be  regarded.  It  is,  that  is  to  say,  helpful  to 
be  told  that  the  object  of  the  state  is  to  secure  the  good  life.  But 
however  important  may  be  the  knowledge  of  purpose,  much 
more  important  is  the  knowledge  of  function.  The  state,  for 
instance,  to  its  members  is  essentially  a  great  public  service 
corporation;  and  it  is,  to  put  it  bluntly,  upon  dividends  that  the 
mind  of  the  public  is  concentrated.  The  question  we  must  ask 
is  not  what  the  state  set  out  to  do,  but  what,  in  historic  fact,  has 
been  done  in  its  name.  In  terms  of  prediction,  we  do  not  ask 
the  moral  programme  of  a  state:   the  more  fruitful  method  is 

**  On  the  comparative  value  of  large  and  small  states  of  the  remarks  of 
Freeman.  "Hist,  of  Federal  Government  in  Greece  and  Italy"  (ed.  of  1893), 
p.  39  ff. 

'«  "Elements  du  Droit  Constitutionnel"  (ed.  of  1906),  p.  22,  and  of. 
Jellinek,  "System  der  Oeffentlichen  subjektiven  Rechte,"  p.  28. 


32  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

?  by  the  patient  analysis  of  its  practices,  to  discover  their  probable 
^  result.     The  problem  of  authority  then  becomes  clear.     5¥e 

■-  -j^  want  to  know  why  men  obey  government.  We  want  the  causes 
that  explain  the  surely  striking  fact  of  a  voluntary  servitude  of 
a  large  mass  of  men  to  a  small  portion  of  their  number.  We 
want  to  know  also  the  way  in  which  authority  should  be  organ- 
ised if  the  results  of  the  state-purpose  are  best  to  be  attained. 
Do  we  need,  for  instance,  one  authority,  or  many?  Is  it,  as 
Rousseau  conceived,  dangerous  to  divide  our  power?  Must 
the  force  at  the  command  of  authority  be,  as  the  timid  Hobbes 
assumed,  without  limit  of  any  kind?  Is  the  individual,  in  other 
words,  absorbed  in  the  state?  Does  his  freedom  mean,  as 
Hegel  makes  it  mean,  to  live  the  life  that  authority  ordains? 
Or  does  freedom  mean  the  recognition  that  there  are  certain 
reserves  within  the  individual  mind  about  which  ultimate  re- 
sistances must  be  organised?  Has  man,  that  is  to  say,  rights 
against  the  state?  If  he  belongs  to  a  church,  where  must  his 
</  obedience  go  if  there  is  conflict  of  authority?  Is  he  interstitial 
no  less  than  social,  and  must  we  protect  his  denial  of  complete 
submergence  in  his  fellowships?  To  none  of  these  questions  can 
we  yet  obtain  in  any  sense  an  adequate  response.  Yet  it  is 
these  questions  we  must  answer  if  we  are  one  day  to  have  a 
working  philosophy  of  the  state. 

III.   THE  NATURE  OF  OBEDIENCE 

Any  political  speculation  thus  involves  an  enquiry  into  the- 
nature  of  obedience  to  government.    It  is  an  enquiry  which  no 
political  philosopher  may  yet  dare  to  answer.     One  day,  we 
may  hope,  the  social  psychologist  will  give  us  insight  enough 
-  into  the  factors  of  human  association  to  enable  us  to  emphasise 

«    j  ''the  main  elements  involved;   and  we  as  yet  can  say  little  more 
\  "^i  than  Hume  when  he  insisted  that  obedience  is  necessary  to 

v'^  >^  the  existence  of  society.    Some  things,  indeed,  we  can  already 
vaguely  see.    Imitation  must  count  for  much."    _Th.e  ..tendency 

v_      in  men^which  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  has  even  dignified  into  an 

•  <^-.^lnstinct-i-to  accept  leadership  is  vital. ^^     We  can  hardly  ap- 

•^  But  see  an  important  warning  as  to  its  influence  in  G.  Wallas,  "The 
Great  Society,"  Ch.  VIII. 

»8  Cf.  the  admirable  chapter  of  Dr.  MacDougall,  "Social  Psychology," 
Ch.  VII,  esp.  p.  194  f . 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  33 

prove  the  account  of  Sir  Henry  Maine  whicli  makes  of  it  a 
habit  bred  into  the  tissue  of  the  race  by  countless  ages  of 
subservience  to  the  state;  though  it  is  no  doubt  true  that  to  an 
extent  which  greatly  needs  analysis  the  state  is  built  up5n  the 
inertia  of  men.^^  Macaulay,  in  an  interesting  passage/"  has 
told  us  how  naturally  the  Duke  of  Wellington  took  for  granted 
the  courageous  discipline  of  the  soldiers  on  the  ill-fated  Birken- 
head; and,  in  a  less  degree,  this  sense  of  discipline  that  results 
from  training  must  play  a  large  part  in  ordering  life.  But  it 
is  not  the  whole  answer  to  the  problem/^ 

Political_thinkers  are,  for  the  most  part,  divided  in  their 
answer  (at  best  provisional)  into  two  schools.  The  most  funda- 
mental, because  it  is  that  which  has  most  subtly  influenced  the 
results  of  juridical  enquiry,  is  perhaps  the  school  of  Hobbes. 
IrLJhat  view,  obedience  is  founded  upon  fear.  Government  is 
able  to  exert  the  authority  it  possesses  because  it  has  behind 
itTEe  ultimate  sanction  of  force.  Men  obey  its  dictates  be- 
cause the  pain  of  disobedience  makes  them  cowards.  Law  is 
thus  the  command  of  government,  and  we  obey  the  law  because 
the  penalties  of  disobedience  are,  for  most  of  us,  too  serious  to 
bje_eridured.i  The  theory  does  not,  perhaps,  take  the  highest 
view  of  human  nature;  but  the  fear-psychologists,  from  Thras- 
ymachus  to  Hobbes,  are  rarely  generous  in  their  outlook. 
That  the  theory  has  an  element  of  truth  is,  of  course,  indubi- 
table. But  that  it  is  obviously  only  a  partial  explanation 
immediately  the  history  of  coercion  is  studied  is  surely  not  less 
clear.  No  one  can  watch  the  slow  rise  of  toleration  into  ac- 
ceptance, can  see  how  dubiously  it  was  proposed,  and  how 
suspiciously  it  was  put  into  opera^on,  without  realising  that 
if,  ultimately,  acceptance  came,  it  can  only  have  been  because 
the  attempt  to  use  fear  as  a  method  of  compulsion  proved,  in 
the  event,  to  be  worthless,  jf  fear  was  the  real  ground  of  obedi- 
ence, the  early  Christians  could  hardly  have  survived;  and 
certainly  the  failure  of  the  Penal  Laws  against  Catholicism  in 
England  becomes  inexplicable.  The  fact  is  that  a  unity  pro- 
duced by  terror  is  at  best  but  artificial ;   and  where  the  deepest 

»5  H.  Maine,  "Popular  Government,"  p.  63. 

"  "Life,"  by  Sir  G.  Trevelyan  (Nelson's  ed.),  11.  293. 

"  Cf.  Mr.  Wallas'  remarks,  "The  Great  Society,"  Ch.  V. 


34  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

convictions  of  men  are  attacked  terror  must  prove  ultimately 
wortljless.** 

<The  school  of  which  the  name  of  Rousseau  is  deservedly  the 
most  famous  adopted  an  entirely  different  attitude.  For  it, 
the  basis  of  obedience  is  consent.  Men  obey  government  be- 
cause the  return  for  their  obedience  is  the  "real"  freedom  it 
is  the  object  of  the  state-life  to  secure.  |  Unless  that  obedience 
be  general,  anarchy  is  inevitable;  acceptance  of  the  govern- 
ment's command  is  therefore  essential  that  its  purposes  may 
be  made  secure.  For  Rousseau  himself,  perhaps,  it  is  the  will 
of  the  citizen-body  alone  that  must  be  binding ;  but  it  is  difficult 
to  see  how  that  will  can  be  directly  known  in  the  modern  state. 
And  for  political  purposes  it  is  probable  that  this  is  the  most 
fruitful  avenue  of  approach.  It  needs,  indeed,  a  singularly 
careful  statement.  The  idea  of  a  social  contract  itself  we  have 
to  reject  as  fiction;  and  it  is  perhaps  safer  not  to  make  use  of 
the  term  contractual  in  the  determination  of  state  relations. 
For  contract,  after  all,  is  a  definite  legal  term  to  which  precise 
meaning  is  attached;  and  to  apply  it  to  the  vague  expecta- 
tions raised  by  the  acts  of  government  is  to  shroud  ourselves 
in  illusion.*'  But  the  emphasis  of  consent  is  unconnected  with 
such  difficulties.  It  emphasises,  what  needs  continual  iteration, 
that  the  end  of  the  state  is  fundamental.  It  throws  into  relief 
the  striking  fact  that  while  the  government  of  the  state  must 
endure,  if  its  own  existence  is  to  be  possible,  its  purpose  is  at 
each  stage  subject  to  examination.  Members  of  the  state  we 
all  may  be,  but  it  must  exist  not  less  for  our  welfare  than  its 
own.  It  is  here,  perhaps,  that  we  have  been  led  astray  by  the 
dangerous  analogies  of  the  nineteenth  century.  When  we 
accept  the  idea  of  the  state  as  an  organism,  what  is  emphasised 
is  subjection  of  its  parts  to  the  welfare  of  the  whole.  But,  in 
sober  fact,  the  welfare  of  the  state  means  nothing  if  it  does 
not  mean  the  concrete  happiness  of  its  living  members.     In 

*2  Cf.  Sir  F.  Pollock's  interesting  essay  on  the  Theory  of  Persecution, 
"Essays  in  Jurisprudence  and  Ethics,"  esp.  p.  175. 

*'  This,  I  think,  would  equally  apply  to  the  school  of  M.  Leon  Bourgeois 
which  explains  the  state  as  founded  upon  quasi-contract.  Every  lawyer 
knows  what  quasi-contract  is,  but  in  the  realm  of  politics  it  only  serves  to 
give  a  specious  exactness  to  inexact  notions. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN    STATE  35 

that  aspect,  the  concept  of  an  organism  is,  as  Dr.  McTaggart 
has  brilliantly  insisted,''^  inapplicable.  For  the  individual  re- 
gards himself  as  an  end  not  less  than  he  so  regards  the  state; 
and  we  are  here  again  confounded  by  the  important  fact  of 
a  refusal  of  absorption  into  the  whole  that  is  greater  than  our- 
selves. If  we  are  fundamentally  Catholics,  for  instance,  we  do 
not  the  more  truly  realise  ourselves  by  obeying  the  Clarendon 
Code;  what  we  do  is  to  njake  ourselves  different,  to  destroy 
ourselves  for  the  state  by  making  for  it  meaningless  the  per- 
sonality that  is  our  contribution  to  its  well-being.  And  that 
can  only  mean  that  acts  which  touch  us  nearly  must  be  de- 
pendent for  their  validity  upon  the  consent  they  can  secure. 
Legally  valid  they  may  well  be  in  the  sense  that  they  emanate 
from  the  authority  that  is  empowered  to  enact  them.  But  no 
student  of  politics  can  stop  there.  A  political  judgment  is  not 
a  pronunciation  of  legal  right  alone.  The  law  of  the  British 
constitution  may  not  give  to  Englishmen  the  right  of  free 
speech;  but  that  does  not  mean  that  an  English  Prime  Min- 
ister will  not  encounter  difficulties  if  he  fails  to  regard  that 
right  as  real.^^  We  must,  indeed,  discuss  the  grounds  upon 
which  consent  may  be  given  or  withheld;  but  that  does  not 
disturb  the  fact  that  the  element  of  consent  is  essential  to  any 
adequate  analysis. 

In  the  theory  of  obedience,  then,  the  element  of  consent  to 
policy,  however  indirect,  is  of  the  first  importance.  We  are, 
in  some  degree  sufficient  to  prevent  rebellion,  satisfied  with  the 
provision  made  by  government  to  fulfil  the  purposes  of  the 
state.  But  the  fact  of  broadening  demand  is  here  sufficiently 
remarkable  to  merit  attention.  The  state,  we  have  said,  exists 
to  promote  the  good  life  of  its  members;  government  is  the 
mechanism  by  which  that  purpose  has  been  translated  into  the 
event.  But  the  question  of  actual  translation  is  always  a 
question  of  fact.  The  motive  of  statesmen,  the  objective  merit 
of  their  acts,  demand  continuous  enquiry.    No  one  can  survey 

**  See  his  fine  essay  on  the  Conception  of  Society  as  an  Organism  in 
his  "Studies  in  Hegelian  Cosmology." 

**  For  a  refusal  to  obey  the  Defence  of  the  Realm  Act  on  this  ground 
see  an  interesting  note  upon  the  action  of  the  executive  council  of  the 
Quakers  in  the  London  Nation  for  December  8,  1917,  and  see  the  report 
of  the  trial  in  New  York  Evening  Post,  June  24,  1918. 


36  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

the  history  of  the  English  state  without  being  impressed  with 
the  way  in  which  the  basis  of  its  government  in  consent  has 
been  progressively  extended.  Government,  under  William  the 
Norman,  is  the  king;  the  purpose  it  has  in  view  in  his  reign 
is  to  achieve  the  thing  he  wills.  The  good  life  of  its  meml^ers, 
in  any  abstract  ethical  sense,  the  full  realisation,  for  example, 
of  the  personality  of  the  conquered  Saxon  churl,  is  here  in  all 
conscience  meaningless  enough.  Magna  Charta  limits  royal 
despotism  by  the  controlling  factor  of  baronial  interest;  yet, 
here  again,  to  introduce  a  concept  of  general  welfare  is  a  dan- 
gerous anachronism.  When  the  country  gentlemen  begin  to 
rule,  the  state  is  a  bigger  and  finer  thing  than  when  its  law  was 
a  variation  upon  the  selfish  aims  of  William  Rufus;  but  no  one, 
to  take  a  single  instance,  can  read  the  record  of  its  game  laws 
and  enclosure  acts,  and  mistake  its  devotion  to  the  interests 
of  the  squire.  With  the  Industrial  Revolution,  power  passes 
to  the  middle  classes;  but  the  long  record  of  Combination 
Acts  and  of  antagonism  to  such  measures  as  would  have  given 
an  unpropertied  labourer  an  interest  in  the  state,  have  a  mean- 
ing which  no  honest  observer  can  misunderstand.  When 
Hannah  More  can  tell  the  women  of  Shipham  in  1801  that  the 
charity  dispensed  to  them  is  to  show  them  their  dependence 
upon  the  rich,  and  comes  "of  favour  and  not  of  right "^^  it  is 
clear  that  the  attitude  she  represents  does  not  visualise  a  state 
in  which  the  concept  of  the  good  life  has  or  obtains  any  general 
application.  The  acutest  of  political  observers  in  nineteenth 
century  England,  Walter  Bagehot,  regarded  a  "permanent 
combination"  of  the  working  classes  as  an  "evil  of  the  first 
magnitude,"  and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  way  in 
which  "the  electors  only  selected  one  or  two  wealthy  men  to 
carry  out  the  schemes  of  one  or  two  wealthy  associations" 
was  "the  only  way  in  which  our  own  system  could  be  main- 
tained."^^ No  one,  indeed,  can  read  Mr.  Bagehot's  gloomy 
prophecies  of  the  probable  effects  of  the  Reform  Act  of  1867 

*^  Hammond,  "The  Town  Labourer,"  p.  229.  I  know  no  more  vivid  illus- 
tration of  the  way  in  which  the  state-purpose  changes  than  this  briUiant 
book. 

"  "Collected  Works,"  Vol.  V,  p.  120.  The  quotation  is  from  his 
"English  Constitution." 


AUTHORITY   IN    THE    MODERN    STATE  37 

without  feeling  that  for  him  Government  is  something  that 
carries  out  the  will  of  the  "higher  classes."  When  a  distin- 
guished connection  of  the  English  royal  family  can  explain  the 
advent  of  compulsory  military  service  as  "necessary  at  this 
time  when  the  people  were  getting  out  of  hand"'*^  it  becomes 
clear  that  scrutiny  must  be  made  of  the  way  in  which  the  pur- 
pose of  the  state  gets  translated  into  acts  of  government. 

In  such  a  scrutiny  certain  obvious  facts  clearly  emerge.  No 
one  claims  that  in  the  modern  state  the  good  life,  in  any  reason- 
able definition,  is  realised  by  any  but  a  small  minority  of  its 
members.  Liberty  in  the  sens^e  of  the_positive  and  equal  oppor- 
tunity of  self-realisation  we  have  hardly  in  any  genuine  sense 
established.  That  is  not  a  cause  for  repining  but  a  simple  fact; 
and  it  is  to  be  set  in  the  perspective  of  the  remembrance  that 
far  larger  numbers  share  in  what  of  good  the  modern  state  can 
secure  than  at  any  previous  period  of  history. ^^  But  whether 
we  consider  the  patent  inequalities  in  the  distribution  of  wealth, 
the  results  of  the  competitive  struggle  in  industry,  the  hopeless 
inadequacies  of  our  educational  systems,  the  one  thing  by  which 
we  must  be  impressed  is  the  absence  of  proportion  between 


political  purpose  and  its  achievement.  We  no  longer  believe 
that  a  simple  individualism  is  the  panacea  for  our  ills.  "  The 
mere  conflict  of  private  interests",  said  Ingram  thirty  years 
ago,^°  "  will  never  produce  a  well-ordered  commonwealth  of 
labour";  and  on  the  other  hand  it  is  not  less  clear  that  the  sim- 
ple formulae  of  a  rigid  collectivism  offer  no  real  prospect  of 
relief.^^  The  truth  is  that  in  the  processes  of  politics  what, 
broadly  speaking,  gets  registered  is  not  a  will  that  is  at  each 
moment  in  accord  with  the  state-purpose,  but  the  will  of  those 
who  iniact  operate  the  machine  of  governmenL  They  are,  it  is 
true,  selected  for  that  purpose  by  the  electoral  body  of  the  state; 
and  it  is  increasingly  obvious  that  universal  adult  suffrage,  or 

*8  Quoted  in  J.  A.  Hobson,  "Democracy  after  the  War,"  p.  67. 

**  Even  in  a  gloomy  period  of  English  history  Francis  Place  could  in 
his  "  Improvement  of  the  Working  People"  record  the  great  change  for 
good  that  he  had  observed  in  his  own  lifetime. 

"  "  History  of  Political  Economy,"  p.  298. 

^'  I  mean  in  the  simple  sense  that  would  transfer  all  industrial  activ- 
ities to  government. 


38  AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

some  close  approximation  to  it,  will  be  the  electoral  system  of 
every  country  that  shares  in  the  ideals  of  Western  civilisation. 
"*  Theoretically,  doubtless,  the  conference  of  universal  suffrage 
places  political  power  in  the  hands  of  that  part  of  the  state  which 
has  not  enjoyed,  or  at  least  only  partially  enjoyed,  the  benefit  of 
its  purposes.  Nor  is  the  reason  for  this  hidden  from  us.  It  is 
more  than  three  centuries  since  Harrington  enunciated  the  law 
that  power  goes  with  the  ownership  of  land;^^  and  if  we  extend 
that  concept,  in  the  light  of  the  Industrial  Revolution,  to  capi- 
tal in  its  broadest  sense,  it  is  now  a  commonplace  that  political 
power  is  the  handmaid  of  economic  power.  In  that  aspect,  it 
is  not  difficult  to  understand  why  the  easy  optimism  of  the  re- 
formers of  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  so 
largely  disappointed.^'  They  were  not,  in  fact,  attacking  the 
real  root  of  the  problem.  No  political  democracy  can  be  real 
that  is  not  as  well  the  reflection  of  an  economic  democracy;  for 
the  business  of  government  is  so  largely  industrial  in  nature  as 
inevitably  to  be  profoundly  affected  by  the  views  and  purposes 
of  those  who  hold  the  keys  of  economic  power.  That  does  not 
necessarily  mean  that  government  is  consciously  perverted  to 
the  ends  of  any  class  within  the  state.  So  to  argue  is  to  project 
into  history  a  malignant  teleology  from  which  it  is,  in  no  small 
degree,  free.  But  when  power  is  actually  exerted  by  any  section 
of  the  community,  it  is  only  natural  that  it  should  look  upon  its 
characteristic  views  as  the  equivalent  of  social  good.  It  is,  for 
example,  difficult  to  believe  that  John  Bright  opposed  the  Fac- 
tory Acts  with  a  view  to  his  own  pocket.  It  is  not  less  impossible 
to  assert  that  Dr.  Arnold  opposes  the  emancipation  of  the  Jews 
out  of  a  selfish  desire  to  benefit  his  own  church.  But  it  was  then 
natural  even  for  a  humane  factory-owner  to  beheve  that  good 
conduct  consists  in  maintaining  the  prosperity  of  the  manu- 
facturing classes,  and  that  whatever,  in  his  judgment,  is  fatal  to 
that  prosperity  is  mischievous.  Dr.  Arnold  believed  the  English 
nation  to  be  by  definition  Christian;  and  to  admit  the  Jews  to 
Parliament  would  thus,  in  his  views,  have  been  a  contradiction  in 

"  "Works"  (ed.  cf .  1747),  p.  39,  cf .  Bonav's  remarks,  "Philosophy  of  Politi- 
cal Economy,"  p.  90. 

"  Cf.  Mr.  Graham  Wallas'  superb  analysis,  "Human  Nature  in  Politics," 
passim. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN   STATE  39 

terms.^*  It  has  been  necessary  for  Mr.  Justice  Holmes  to  remind 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  that  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  does  not  enact  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's  Social 
Statics.^^  The  fellow-servant  doctrine  could  never  have  won 
acceptance  in  an  industrial  democracy.^^  The  Osborne  decision 
is  naturally  to  be  expected  from  a  group  of  men  whose  circum- 
stances and  training  would  have  obviously  tended  to  make  I 
suspect  the  methods  and  purposes  of  trade-unionism.^^ 

This  is  a  truth  perhaps  somewhat  difficult  to  perceive  in  our 
own  day  because  it  tends  to  be  obscured  by  the  mechanisms  of 
the  democratic  powers.  But  the  examination  of  past  history 
makes  it  more  than  clear.  No  one  can  analyse  the  social  and 
political  conditions  of  the  ancien  regime  in  France  without 
perceiving  that  the  whole  effort  of  its  structure  was  towards  the 
maintenance  of  aristocratic  interests.  Whether  we  regard  the 
form  of  the  States  General,  the  composition  of  the  Parliaments, 
the  privileges  of  the  nobility,  it  is,  as  Acton  said,  "class  gov- 
ernment" that  they  imply,  "the  negation  of  the  very  idea  of 
state  and  nation.  "^^  The  episcopal  opposition  to  CathoHc 
Emancipation  is  a  similar  phenomenon;  it  is  grounded  upon 
the  conviction  that  it  was  detrimental  to  the  interests  of  the 
Estabhshed  Church.^^  The  same  problem  confronted  the  au- 
thors of  the  American  Constitution.  "The  most  common  and 
durable  source  of  Factions,"  said  Madison,^"  "has  been  the 
various  and  unequal  distribution  of  property.  Those  who  hold 
and  those  who  are  without  property  have  ever  formed  distinct 
interests  in  society.  .  .  .  The_regulation  of  these  various  and 
interfering  interests  forms  the  principal  task  of  modern  legis- 
lation and  involves  the  spirit  of  party  and  faction  in  the 
necessary  and  ordinary  operations  of  government."  It  does 
not,  generally  speaking,  seem  inaccurate  to  say  that  the  proc- 

"  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  89. 

"  Lochner  v.  New  York,  198  U.  S.  45,  75-6.  The  whole  opinion  throws 
a  flood  of  light  upon  this  question. 

66  Cf .  A.  Birrell,  "Law  of  Employers'  Liability,"  p.  20. 

"Cf.Webb,  "History  of  Trade  Unionism,"  Introd.  to  the  1911  edition, 
esp.  p.  XXV. 

'*  "Lectures  on  the  French  Revolution,"  p.  4L 

"  Cf .  my  "  Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  123  f. 

«"  The  Federalist,  No.  10. 


40  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

esses  of  politics  are  a  struggle  between  the  possessors  of  a  cer- 
tain power,  and  those  who  desire  to  share  in  its  exercise.  The 
grounds  of  exclusion  have  been  very  various.  Often  we  meet 
with  suspicion  of  those  unpossessed  of  property.  Sometimes 
membership  of  a  religious  creed  is  held  as  a  disqualification. 
The  general  fact  is  that,  whatever  the  grounds  of  exclusion, 
th'ose'wlib  liave  possession  of  power  are  not  lightly  persuadecl 
to  part  with  it,  or  to  co-operate  in  its  exercise.  Admission  to 
rights  is  the  gate  most  difficult  of  entrance  in  the  political 
citadel,    j 

It  is  yet  obvious  that  if  the  democratic  synthesis  be  perma- 
nent— and  it  is  upon  that  assumption  alone  that  this  analysis 
is  valid — ^in  the  matter  of  rights  there  can  be  no  differentiation. 
Government  exercises  power  not  in  the  interests  of  any  party  or 
class  within  the  state  but  in  the  interest  of  the  state  as  a  whole. 
But  that  is  undisguised  idealism.  In  sober  fact,  government  is 
exerted  in  the  interests  of  those  who  contFol  its  exerciser  That 
is,  indeed,  progressively  less  true.  A  modern  parliament  would 
not  dare  to  debate  a  Factory  Act  in  the  style  of  1802.  Few  mod- 
ern statesmen  would  venture  to  analyse  a  Reform  Bill  in  the 
caustic  fashion  of  Bagehot  or  Robert  Lowe.  No  responsible 
statesman  would  now  speak  of  atheists  in  the  style  of  Edmund 
Burke.^^  But  once  the  fact  is  clear  that  the  result  of  govern- 
ment is  in  practice  different  from  what  theory  makes  it,  the 
necessary  inference  is  a  suspicion  of  power.  What  use  is  the 
sovereignty  of  the  state  if  it  means  the  aristocratic  privileges  of 
the  ancien  regime?  What  use  is  the  sovereignty  of  the  state  ^ 
if  it  permits  the  maintenance  of  the  slums  of  the  modern  city? 
The  conclusion,  surely,  is  forced  upon  us  that  the  state  permits 
a  sinister  manipulation  of  its  power.  It  is  the  habit  of  govern- 
ment to  translate  the  thoughts  and  feelings  and  passions  with 
which  it  is  charged  into  terms  of  the  event  and  deem  them  the 
achievement  of  the  state-purpose.  But  so  specialised  a  welfare 
as  that  which  is  achieved  is  obviously  different  from  the  ideal 
end  so  vigorously  emphasised  by  philosophy. 

Not,  indeed,  that  the  record  of  government  is  an  unrelieved 
catalogue  of  perversions.     Few  would  be  so  malicious  or  so 

"  Cf.  for  instance,  the  second  "  Letter  upon  a  Regicide  Peace."  "Works" 
(World's  Classics  ed.),  Vol.  VI,  esp.  p.  192  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  41 

stupid  as  not  to  believe  that  there  are  numerous  instances  of  ^ 

statesmen  who  have  pursued  a  general  good  wider  than  their 
private  desire  because  they  believed  the  times  demanded  it. 
That,  surely,  was  the  case  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  in  1846.  He  de- 
stroyed, almost  consciously,  his  party  in  order  to  achieve  an 
end  he  thought  more  splendid  than  its  own  fortune;  and  he 
did  not  falter  even  when  his  policy  involved  his  political  down- 
fall. It  would  have  been  simple,  to  take  a  different  problem, 
for  John  Hus  at  Constance,  or  for  Luther  at  Worms,  to  have 
recanted.  In  either  case  the  desertion  would  have  been  easy — 
as  easy,  for  example,  as  Luther's  desertion  of  the  peasants 
some  five  years  later.  But  the  individual  action  does  not 
destroy,  even  if  it  may  mitigate,  the  general  tendency. .  There  l/"^ 
has  been  yet  no  state  in  history  in  which  the  consistent  effort  ~" 
has  been  towards  the  unique  realisation  of  the  common  good. 
If  the  state  is  sovereign,  what,  in  such  an  aspect,  does  its 
sovereignty  imply?  It  is,  we  are  told,  an  absolute  thing;  and  - 
the  most  generous  of  modern  German  theorists  has  allowed  it 
only  the  limitation  of  its  personal  grace.  But  this  theory  of 
auto-limitation  is  in  reality  meaningless  f^  for  to  be  bound  - 
only  by  one's  will  is  not,  in  any  real  sense,  to  be  bound  at  all. 
Now  sovereignty,  we  are  told,^^  "is  that  power  which  is  neither 
temporary,  nor  delegated  nor  subject  to  particular  rules  which 
it  cannot  alter,  nor  answerable  to  any  other  power  on  earth." 
What  this  really  means  is  less  formidable  than  the  appearance 
seems  to  warrant.  It  imphes  only  that  for  the  courts  the  will 
of  a  sovereign  body,  the  king  in  Parliament  for  example,  is 
beyond  discussion.  Every  judge  must  accept  unquestioningly 
what  fulfils  the  requirements  of  the  forms  of  law.  But,  for  the 
purposes  of  political  philosophy,  it  is  not  so  abstract  and  a  'priori 
a  definition  we  require.  Cwiiatjve  desire  to  know  is^  not  what 
has  the  legal  right  to  prevail,  but  what  docs  in  actual  fact  pre- 
vail and  the  reasons  that  explain  its  dominance.'  Here,  it  is 
clear  enough,  the  legal  theory  of  sovereignty  is  worthless. 
Once  we  are  in  the  realm  of  actual  life  it  is  upon  the  limitations 

'^  The  best  defense  of  this  theory  is  in  JeUinek,  "Recht  des  mod.  Staates," 
p.  421  f. 

*3  Pollock,  "History  of  the  Science  of  PoUtics,"  p.  52.  I  ought  to  add  that 
Sir  F.  Pollock  is  here  stating  a  view  in  which  he  does  not  himself  share. 


42  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

of  sovereignty  that  attention  must  be  concentrated.  What 
then  impresses  us  is  the  wide  divergence  between  legal  right 
and  moral  right.  Legally,  an  autocratic  Czar  may  shoot  down 
his  subjects  before  the  winter  palace  at  Petrograd;  but,  morally, 
it  is  condemnation  that  we  utter.  Legally,  Parliament  could 
tomorrow  re-enact  the  Clarendon  Code;  but  what  stirs  us  now 
is  the  injustice  of  its  policy.  There  is,  that  is  to  say,  a  vast 
difference  between  what  Dean  Pound  has  admirably  called 
"Law  in  books"  and  "Law  in  action."^"*  It  is  with  the  latter 
alone  that  a  realistic  theory  of  the  state  can  be  concerned. 

IV.    THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  POWER 

In  actual  life,  then,  the  sovereignty  of  the  state  is  subject  to 
limitation.  The  power  it  can  exert,  either  directly,  or  through - 
its  instruments,  is  never  at  any  moment  absolute.  Attention 
must  be  ceaselessly  paid  to  the  thousand  varied  influences  that 
play  upon  the  declaration  of  its  will.  Power,  that  is  to  say,  is 
held  upon  conditions.  The  members  of  the  state  look  to  it  for 
certain  conduct  as  alone  capable  of  justification.  They  think, 
in  brief,  that  there  are  certain  principles  by  which  its  life  must 
be  regulated.  Few  would  urge  that  those  principles  can  at  any 
moment  be  regarded  as  unchanging.  It  is  a  matter  of  the 
simplest  demonstration  that  moral  ideals  cannot  escape  the 
categories  of  evolution.  Conduct  that  would  distress  one  gen- 
eration is  regarded  with  equanimity  by  its  predecessor.  But 
that  does  not  alter  the  vital  fact  that  for  authority  a  way  of 
life  is  prescribed.  It  is  not,  indeed,  laid  down  in  a  written 
code,  though  it  only  lies  the  more  profoundly  in  our  nature 
because  it  is  inarticulate.  For  every  statesman  knows  well 
enough  that  there  are  certain  things  he  dare  not  do  because  the 
sense  of  the  public  will  be  against  him.  That  system  of  con- 
ventions is  important.  It  emphasises  the  conditionahty  of 
j)ower.  It  means,  in  other  words,  that  so  deep  is  the  expecta- 
tion of  what,  broadly  speaking,  may  be  termed  the  right  con- 
duct of  authority  that  its  antithesis  ensures  the  provocation 
of  penalties. 

This  can,  perhaps,  be  more  usefully  expressed  in  another 
way.     Whatever  the  requirements  of  legal  theory,  in  actual - 

"  44  American  Law  Review,  p.  12. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  43 


fact  no  man  surrenders  his  whole  being  to  the  state.    He  ha&J::. 
a  sense  of  right  and  wrong.     If  the  state,  or  its  instruments, 
goes  too  consistently  against  that  sense,  he  is  pricked  into  an-.- 
tagonism.    The  state,  that  is  to  say,  is  for  him  sovereign  only 
where  his  conscience  is  n6l"~stirf ed  against  its  performance. 
Hor  is  this  all.    He  expects  from  the  state  the  fulfihnent  of  its 
purposes.    He  expects  it  to  make  possible  for  him  the  attain- 
njent  of  certain  goods.     Again,  the  degree  of  expectation  is 
subject  to  serious  change;  an  Anglo-Saxon  churl  will  have  hopes 
different  from  those  of  an  EngHsh  workman  of  the  twentieth 
century;    Mrs.   Proudie  will  exert  a  different  power  in  the 
Barchester  of  one  age  than  will  the  wife  of  her  husband's  suc- 
cessor.   When  the  realisation  of  tljese  hopes  is  keenly  enough, 
felt  to  be  essential  to  the  realisation  of  the  purpose  of  the  state 
we.  have  a  political  right.    It  is  a  .right  natural  in  the  sense  that 
the  given  conditions  of  society  at  the  particular  time  require 
its  recognition.     It  is  not  justified  on  grounds  of  history.     It 
is  not  justified  on  grounds  of  any  abstract  or  absolute  ethic.    It 
iasimply  insisted  that  if,  in  a  given  condition  of  society,  power 
is  so  exerted  as  to  refuse  the  recognition  of  that  right,  resistance 
is  bound  to  be  encountered.    By  right,  that  is  to  say,  we  mean 
a  demand  that  has  behind  it  the  burden  of  the  general  experi- . 
ence  of  the  state.    It  isj^as_T.,.H,  Xaieen.  said," a  power  of  which  \ 
the  exercise  by  the  individual  or  by  some  body  of  men  is  recog-N.    / 
nised  by  a  society  either  as  itself  directly  essential  to  the  conPy  \      - 
mon  good,  or  as  conferred  by  an  authority  of  which  the  main- 
tenance is  recognised  as  so  essential."®^  ' 

But  this,  it  may  be  argued,  is  a  claim  hardly  less  theoretic 
than  sovereignty  itself.  It  may  not  be  able  to  get  itself  recog- 
nised The  government  may,  through  malice,  or  in  honesty, 
doubt  its  wisdom  and  oppose  it.  But  a  right  admits  of  en-  -- 
forcement.  There  are,  in  the  first  place,  the  ordinary  channels  — 
of  representative  government;  in  a  democratic  state,  for  in- 
stance, periodic  reference  is  made  to  the  people  for  the  refresh- 
ment of  power.  At  an  English  general  election,  for  example, 
ministers  are  returned  to  or  rejected  from  office  either  to  per- 
form certain  things,  or  because  it  is  believed  that  the  opposing 
party  will  better  represent  the  purpose  of  the  state.     The 

«  T.  H.  Green,  "Collected  Works,"  11,  419. 


44  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Labour  party  in  England  today  is  demanding  for  "  every  member 
of  the  community,  in  good  or  bad  times  alike  (and  not  only  to 
the  strong  and  able,  the  well-born  and  the  fortunate),"  the 
securing  "of  all  the  requisites  of  healthy  life  and  worthy  citi- 
zenship."^^ A  large  portion  of  the  British  state  is  thus  striving 
to  achieve  certain  things  as  rights  because  without  them  life 
is  not  deemed  worth  the  living.  By  rights  it  means  the  recog- 
nition that  every  member  of  the  state  must  witEout  distinction 
possess  certain  goods,  and  that  the  situation  implied  in  that 
possession  is  too  fundamental  to  be  subject  to  the  whims  of 
authority.  These  rights  are  to  be  written  into  the  fabric  of 
the  state.  They  limit  what  authority  can  do  by  making  them 
a  minimum  below  which  no  member  of  the  state  must  fall. 
They  are,  normally,  written  into  the  fabric  of  the  state  by  the 
constitutional  processes  provided  by  law;  and  it  is  perhaps 
well,  as  Green  has  suggested,^''  to  emphasise  the  desirability 
of  achievement  by  this  means.  But  the  reserve  power  of  revo- 
lution always  exists.  The  American  War  of  Independence 
is  the  vindication  of  a  claim  to  a  certain  right  of  self-govern- 
ment; and  in  that  case  territorial  conditions  made  possible 
the  foundation  of  a  new  state  separate  from  the  old.  The  French 
Revolution  is  the  assertion  of  a  lack  of  confidence  in  the  holders 
of  power,  and  the  change  in  the  form  of  the  state  that  the  claim 
to  certain  rights  might  be  fulfilled. 

In  the  case  both  of  the  American  and  the  French  Revolution 
we  have  the  programme  upon  which  the  new  order  was  founded: 
in  neither  case  can  it  be  said  that  it  was  in  any  full  sense 
achieved.  But  this  does  not  lessen  the  significance  of  the  moral 
that  is  to  be  drawn  from  the  study  of  the  problem  of  rights. 
Whenever  in  a  state  a  group  of  persons  large  enough  to  make  its 
presence  felt  demands  the  recognition  of  certain  claims,  it  will 
not  recognise  a  law  which  attempts  defiance  of  them;  nor  will  it 
accept  the  authority  by  which  that  law  'is  enforced.  Recent 
events  have  thrown  this  attitude  into  striking  relief.  The  atti- 
tude of  Ulster  before  1914  was  a  refusal  to  accept  the  sovereignty 

**  "Labour  and  the  New  Social  Order,  Report  on  Reconstruction  by  the 
Subcommittee  of  the  British  Labour  Party"  (Reprinted  in  The  New  Republic, 
Vol.  XIV,  No.  172,  Part  II,  p.  4). 

"  "Works,"  II,  417  f,  of.  Barker,  "Political  Thouglit  from  Spencer,"  p.  60. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE    MODERN    STATE  45 

of  an  Act  of  Parliament  which  granted  self-government  to 
Ireland.    The  refusal  was  made  in  the  name  of  conscience;  and  ,- 
whatever  be  thought  of  the  penumbra  of  passions  and  personal- 
ties by  which  it  was  surrounded  the  fundamental  fact  has  to  be 
recorded  that  Parliament  and  the  ministry  found  themselves 
jointly  powerless  in  the  face  of  an  illegally  organised  opposi- 
tion.   The  women  suffragists  were  able,  over  a  period  of  eight 
years,  to  set  at  defiance  the  ordinary  rules  of  law;    and  few 
people  today  seriously  doubt  that  the  reason  why  that  defiance 
was  so  successfully  maintained  was  the  fact  of  its  moral  content.  — 
Those  who  refused  obedience  to  the  Military  Service  Act  of 
1916  were  able  to  prove  the  powerlessness  of  the  state  to  force 
them  into  subjection.    Convinced  of  the  iniquity  of  war,  they 
claimed  the  right  to  be  absolved  from  direct  contact  with  it; 
and  it  is  highly  significant  that  in  America  the  Quakers  should 
have  received  express  exemption  from  that  contact.     That  is 
the  tacit  admission  that  where  the  means  taken  by  the  state  ^ 
to  achieve  its  purposes  conflicts  with  the  ideals  of  another 
group  there  are  occasions  when  the  state  will  find  it  wise  to 
forego  the  claim  of  paramountcy.     And,  here  again,  the  real 
fact  involved  is  that  of  consent.    No_state  can-act  in  the  faceX„^\ 
of  the  active  opposition  of  any  considerable  portion  of  itself.  VV 
No  state  will  venture  in  practice  to  claim  control  over  certain 
areas  within  the  competence  of  other  groups.    Acts  of  authority 
are  thus  limited  by  the  consciences  that  purposes"^ifferent  from   \ 
that  of  the  state  can  command. 

That  is  to  affirm  that  government  dare  not  range  over  the 
whote^rea  of  human  life.     No  government,  for  instance,  dare 
prescribe  the  life  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.     Bismarck 
made  the  attempt,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  it  will  be  repeated.^^  ^      .^v^ 
Where  alone  the  state  can  attempt  interference  with  groups./     -y^ 
other  than  itself  is  where  the  action  of  the  group  touches  terri-     '"^ 
tory  over  which  the  state  claims  jurisdictionj   There  is  no 
certainty  that  the  state  will  be  successful.  -There  is  even  no         ""?' 
certainty  that  it  merits  success.     It  may,  indeed,  crush  an     ^      ^ 
opponent  by  brute  force.     That  does  not,  however,  establish  _„:: 
right;    it  is  merely  the  emphasis  of  physical  superiority.    The 
only  ground  for  state-success  is  where  the  purpose  of  the  state 

«8  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignf^ ,"  Ch.  V. 

1r\  '  '   ' 


Y 


t^'-^''?-'    t,^..y      ^.ocfi.'-^- 

46,^     AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

is  morally  superior  to  that  of  its  opponent.  The  only  ground 
upon  which  the  individual  can  give  or  be  asked  his  support 
for  the  state  is  from  the  conviction  that  what  it  is  aiming  at  is, 
in  each  particular  action,  good.  We  deny,  that  is  to  say,  that 
the  general  end  of  the  ideal  state  colours  the  policy  of  a  given 
act  of  a  special  state.  And  that  denial  involves  from  each 
member  of  the  state  continuous  scrutiny  of  its  purpose  and  its 
method. 

It  deserves  his  allegiance,  it  should  receive  it,  only  where  it 
commands  his  conscience.  Bismarck  failed  in  the  Kulturkampf 
precisely  because  he  could  not  convince  the  German  Catholic^ 
of  the  moral  superiority  of  his  position  to  that  of  Rome.  It 
was  right  that  he  should  have  so  failed;  for  the  basis  of  his 
position  was  virtually  the  assertion  that  the  duty  of  the  indi- 
vidual conscience  is  a  blind  and  impulsive  obedience  to  govern- 
ment. He  did  not  understand  that  to  put  a  minister  in  office 
does  not  permit  the  citizen  body  to  cease  all  interest  in  affairs 
of  state.  On  the  contrary,  because  it  is  in  the  name  of  that 
citizen-body  that  power  is  exerted,  it  is  essential  that  they 
should  have  convictions  about  the  goodness  or  badness  of  the 
particular  end  that  power  is  intended  to  serve.  We  can  make 
no  distinction,  except  in  possible  aspiration,  between  govern- 
ment and  subjects,  so  long  as  there  is  acquiescence  by  the  one 
in  the  policy  of  the  other.^^  An  act  of  government  becomes  a 
state-act  whenever  the  members  of  the  state  do  not  attempt  at 
least  its  repudiation.^"  For  power  is  held  not  for  evil  but  for 
good,  and  deflection  from  the  path  of  right  purpose  ought  to 
involve  the  withdrawal  of  authority  for  its  exercise. 

This,  clearly  enough,  must  make  an  important  difference  to 
the  emphasis  we  place  upon  rights.    Once  we  insist  upon  con-, 
y/N      sent  as  the  most  fruitful  source  of  the  claim  to  obedience,  there 

«^  This  amends  somewhat  the  argument  of  my  Brst  book  (Ch.  I,  p.  11). 
I  there  argued  that  we  have  no  right  to  identify  the  citizen  with  the  state; 

X-s  but  I  now  think  it  is  better  to  emphasise  the  possibiUty  of  distinction  and 
.   to  argue  for  jthe^  identity  of  moral  responsibihty  where  there  is  passive 
y^       acquiescence.    Liebknecht,  in  such  a  view,  does  not  share  in  the  responsi- 
'  '•  bility  of  the  German  state  for  the  destruction  of  Belgium. 

'« I  say  "attempt";  for  it  is  conceivable  that  the  members  of  a  s 
might  desire  and  aim  at,  repudiation,  but  fail  because  the  govern' 
was  too  powerful  to  be  immediately  i    isted  with  success. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN   STATE  47 

is  cast  upon  the  individual  member  of  the  state  the  duty  of 
scrutinising  its  poUcy;  for  if  he  ought  ultimately  at  least  to 
protest,  and  perhaps  to  disobey,  where  his  conscience  is  in- 
volved, an  active  interest  in  politics  is  the  most  indispensable 
condition  of  citizenship.  Nor  is  that  active  interest  an  easy 
matter.  It  is  scarcely  difficult  for  the  son  of  a  political  family, 
brought  up,  like  the  younger  Pitt,  to  regard  pohtics  as  the  one 
adequate  pursuit  of  the  mind,  to  catch  the  vision  of  its  devious 
bye-ways.  But,  for  the  average  voter,  there  is  scarcely  the 
same  infallible  source  of  understanding  in  questions  of  state, 
and  the  opportunity  of  training  is  essential.  Few  would  now 
interpret  training  to  mean  the  weekly  discussions  of  Harring- 
ton's Oceana;  but  it  is  undeniable  that  some  satisfactory  sub- 
stitute has  still  to  be  found.  An  illiterate  man  has  no  real 
means  of  performing  the  functions  of  citizenship.  A  man  who 
is  exhausted  by  excessive  physical  labour  is  similarly  debarred 
from  the  opportunity  of  adequate  understanding.  If  the  ner- 
vous and  mental  energies  of  men  are  exhausted  in  the  sheer 
effort  of  existence,  as  they  so  largely  are  exhausted,  it  is  plain 
that  the  most  efficacious  well-spring  of  political  improvement 
is  poisoned  at  its  source.  One  of  the  main  evils  of  the  history  of 
government,  indeed,  has  been  the  tragic  fact  that  over  a  great 
period  politics  has  been  the  concern  of  a  leisured  class  simply 
because  no  other  portion  of  the  community  has  had  the  time 
or  the  strength  to  devote  itself  in  any  full  measure  to  these 
questions.  That  is  not  in  any  sense  to  suggest  misgovernment; 
but  it  is  to  suggest  the  impossible  narrowness  of  the  source  from 
which  the  dominating  ideas  of  government  have  been  drawn. 
It  is  to  suggest  that  if  the  state  is  to  be  in  any  real  sense  repre- 
sentative of  the  wills  and  desires  of  its  members,  their  wills 
and  desires  must  have  some  minimum  physical  basis  of  material 
and  intellectual  adequacy  upon  which  to  function.^^  That  m 
turn  implies  that  means  must  be  taken  to  safeguard  the  expres- 
sion of  their  hopes.  Rights  are  no  more  than  the  expression  of 
this  minimum  and  its  safeguards  in  broad  terms.  The  right 
of  free  expression,  for  example,  is  obviously  essential  if  desires 
are  to  be  made  known.    If  governments  can  suppress  whatever 

"Cf.  Webb,  "Industrial  Democracy"  (ed.  of  1911),  pp.  766-84  and  the 
Report  of  the  Subcommittee  of  the  British  Labour  Party  cited  above. 


48  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

they  may  dislike,  as  in  the  lean  period  of  English  radicalism/^ 
the  result  is  obviously  to  put  a  premium  upon  the  maintenance 
of  the  status  quo.  The  right  to  freedom  of  association  is  simply 
the  recognition  that  community  of  purpose  involves  community 
of  action.  The  right  to  education  is  simply  the  registration 
of  a  claim  to  understand  in  civilised  terms  the  ways  and  means 
of  social  life.  A  power  that  fails  to  achieve  these  things,  much 
more,  a  power  that  aims  at  thwarting  them,  has  abused  the 
trust  that  has  been  placed  in  its  hands.  }  Power  has  thus  to  be 
limited  by  rights  because  otherwise  there  is  no  means,  pave 
continualjeyolution,  of  achieving  the  purpose  of  the  state.j 

And  it  is  important  to  recognise  in  full  measure  the  curious- 
limitations  of  power.  Even  if  v»-e  grant,  for  the  purpose  of 
argument,  its  general  dispbsitioTrtT5""good"wi'n,  there"  are  two 
great  means  by  which  it  may  suffer  perversion.  It  may,  in 
the  first  place,  l^e  deliberately  misused  for  selfish  ends.  There 
have  been  periods,  for  instance,  in  the  history  of  American 
states  when  it  is  matter  of  common  knowledge  that  the  machine 
of  government  was  disgracefully  exploited.  The  histories  of 
Tammany  Hall,  of  Mr.  Kearney  in  CaUfornia,  of  the  Phila- 
delphia gas  ring,  are  all  of  them  infamous  enough  to  need  no 
comment.''^  "Some  states,"  Lord  Bryce  has  written,^*  "... 
have  so  bad  a  name  that  people  are  surprised  when  a  good 
act  passes."  No  observer  of  American  politics,  indeed,  can 
fail  to  emphasise  as  a  fundamental  fact  in  the  life  of  the  com- 
monwealth the  general  suspicion  of  all  who  are  interested 
by  profession  in  the  business  of  government.  A  justice  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  has  written  a  vehe- 
ment denunciation  of  the  influence  of  high  finance  upon  Ameri- 
can political  life.''^  Nor  is  such  perversion  confined  to  America 
alone.  The  connection  of  great  financial  concerns  with  foreign 
policy  is  a  problem  old  enough  to  have  its  importance  recog- 
nised by  every  fair-minded  observer.     If  a  German  firm  can 

'2  Cf.  Veitch,  "The  Genesis  of  Padiamentary  Reform,"  Chs.  IX-XIV— 
an  invaluable  book. 

"  Cf.  Bryce,  "Am.  Commonwealth,"  II,  406-448. 

'■•  Ibid.  II,  163. 

's  L.  D.  Brandeis,  "Other  People's  Money."  Mr.  Justice  Brandeis  was 
not,  of  course,  a  member  of  the  Supreme  Court  when  this  was  written. 


AUTHORITY    IN  THE   MODERN   STATE  49 

use  the  force  of  its  government  in  order  to  coerce  a  foreign 
power  into  granting  it  a  share,  dishonestly  gained,  in  spoils 
of  doubtful  moral  validity/^  obviously  the  considerations  which 
affect  the  foreign  policy  of  a  state  demand  an  exact  scrutiny. 
If  the  Russo-Japanese  war  can  even  partially  arise  from  the 
private  ambitions  of  interested  courtiers,"  measures  have 
obviously  to  be  taken  to  limit  the  scope  of  abuse  to  which  the 
power  of  government  is  subject.  Phenomena  like  Mr.  Cecil 
Rhodes,  who  deliberately  set  aside  the  consideration  of  nice 
moral  issues,^^  raise  problems  of  the  first  importance. 

But  deliberate  perversion  of  power  brings  with  it,  in  the 
long  run,  its  own  downfall.  What  is  more  difficult  of  enquiry 
is  the  devotion  of  governmental  authority  to  narrow  purposes 
which  are  deemed  good  by  an  irresponsible  controlling  minority. 
The  Combination  Acts  are  a  notable  instance  of  this  kind. 
They  reflect,  of  course,  the  general  tendency  of  the  French 
Revolution  to  regard  all  associations  as  evil;^*  but  they  rep- 
resent also,  in  more  sinister  fashion,  an  entire  failure  on  the 
part  of  government  to  understand  the  problems  of  the  work- 
ing-class. The  House  of  Commons  refused,  both  in  1824  and 
in  1826,  to  allow  the  abuse  of  man-traps  and  spring-guns  to 
be  remedied;  and  it  was  only  after  a  long  struggle  that,  in 
1836,  a  prisoner  on  trial  for  felony  was  at  last  allowed  to  have 
the  benefit  of  counsel.  "The  existence  of  unjust  and  foolish 
laws,"  says  Professor  Dicey ,^°  "is  less  remarkable  than  the 
grounds  upon  which  these  laws  were  defended.  Better,  it 
was  argued,  that  honest  men,  who  had  never  fired  a  gun, 
should  be  exposed  to  death  by  spring-guns  or  man-traps  than 
that  a  country  gentleman  should  fail  in  preserving  his  game. 
A  prisoner,  it  was  suggested,  though  he  might  occasionally, 
through  inability  to  employ  counsel,  be  convicted  of  a  murder 
or  a  theft  which  he  had  never  committed,  had  no  reason  to 
complain,  for  the  very  absence  of  an  advocate  turned  the 

'6  Brailsford,"  The  War  of  Steel  and  Gold,"  p.  38. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  52. 

^*  As  in  the  Glen-Grey  Act  for  example,  Cf.  Hobson,  "Imperialism"  (cd.  of 
1905),  p.  236. 

"  Cf.  chapter  V.  below. 

«"  "Law  and  Public  Opinion"  (2d  edition),  p.  88. 


50  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

judge  into  a  counsel  for  the  prisoner.  The  plea  was  notoriously 
untrue;  but  had  it  been  founded  on  fact,  it  would  have  im- 
plied that  injustice  to  a  prisoner  could  be  remedied  by  neglect 
of  duty  on  the  part  of  a  judge." 

The  process  of  administration  has  been  beset  by  similar 
difficulties.  Everyone  knows  of  the  Circumlocution  Ofl5ce 
immortalised  in  "Little  Dorrit;"  and  the  remarkable  experiences 
of  Mr.  Edmund  Yates  in  the  Post  Office  are  not  without  their 
suggestiveness.^^  Sir  Henry  Taylor  explained  the  evils  of  the 
irresponsibility  that  existed  in  his  day.  "By  evading  decisions 
wherever  they  can  be  evaded,"  he  wrote,^^  <'j-,y  shifting  them 
on  other  departments  and  authorities  whenever  they  can  be 
shifted;  by  giving  decisions  on  superficial  examination,.  .  . 
by  deferring  questions  till,  as  Lord  Bacon  said,  they  resolve  of 
themselves;  by  undertaking  nothing  for  the  pubhc  good  which 
the  public  voice  does  not  call  for;  by  conciliating  loud  and 
energetic  individuals  at  the  expense  of  such  public  interest 
as  are  dumb  and  do  not  attract  attention;  by  sacrificing 
everywhere  what  is  feeble  and  obscure  to  what  is  influential 
and  cognizable  .  .  .the  single  functionary  may  .  .  .reduce 
his  business  within  his  powers,  and  perhaps  obtain  for  himself 
the  most  valuable  of  all  reputations  in  this  line  of  life,  that  of 
a  safe  man."  The  complaint  of  Charles  Buller  is  similar,^^ 
and  the  final  consequence  of  the  bureaucratic  process  was 
given  its  permanent  expression  by  Carlyle.^^  "The  mode  of 
making  the  service  efficient,"  said  a  distinguished  civil  servant 
of  the  fifties,^*  "seems  never  to  have  entered  their  minds." 
The  routine  of  habit,  in  fact,  is  impermeable  to  the  normal 
channels  of  change;  and  so  important  a  critic  as  Sir  Charles 
Trevelyan  actually  thought  that  it  was  the  spirit  of  1848 
which  induced  England  to  put  its  house  in  order.^^     There 

"  See  his  amusing  "Recollections,"  Vol.  I,  pp.  96  f,  106. 

82  '^The  Statesman,"  p.  155. 

^  Cf.  his  character  of  Mr.  Mothercountry  in  his  "Responsible  Govern- 
ment in  the  Colonies." 

"*  "Latter  Day  Pamphlets"  (ed.  of  1885),  p.  47. 

^  "Civil  Service  Papers,"  1854-5,  p.  272.  He  is  speaking  of  the  House 
of  Commons. 

*^  "Second  Report  of  Commission  on  Civil  Service."  Pari.  Papers,  1875, 
Vol.  XXIII,  p.  100. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  51 

has,  of  course,  been  vast  improvement  since  that  time;  but 
the  tendency  to  which  administration  is  liable  is  a  constant 
factor  in  the  exercise  of  authority. 

In  all  this,  the  argument  of  deliberate  malevolence  is  as 
inaccurate  as  it  is  obvious  and  certain  that  the  result  is  the 
perversion  of  the  end  the  state  should  serve.  It  is  perhaps 
dangerous,  as  Burke  suggested,  to  go  back  too  often  to  the 
foundations  of  the  state;  but  it  is  at  least  no  abstract  question 
upon  which  we  are  engaged.  If  we  find  that,  in  the  event, 
authority  has  certain  habits,  and  that  they  result  in  evil,  we 
have  to  seek  means  of  their  effective  change,  or  at  least  some 
safeguard  against  the  evil.  And  it  is  in  events  alone  that  we 
must  search  for  our  truths.  It  is  useless,  as  Burke  rightly 
saw,^^  to  discuss  "the  abstract  right  of  a  man  to  food  or  medi- 
cine. The  question  is  upon  the  method  of  procuring  and  ad- 
ministering them."  If  we  find  that,  however  good  the  intention 
of  those  who  hold  the  reins  of  power,  that  intention  is  somehow, 
if  not  frustrated,  at  least  inadequately  realised  in  the  event, 
we  have  to  examine  the  elements  involved  in  such  translation 
into  practice.  All  kinds  of  factors  may  complicate  the  problem. 
If  the  member  of  Parliament,  for  instance,  be  Sir  Pitt  Crawley, 
it  is  hardly  useful  to  force  upon  his  attention  the  rights  of 
man.  If  the  member  of  the  House  of  Lords  be  a  promoted 
Archdeacon  Grantley  assuredly  he  will  not  grasp  the  social 
problem  in  an  adequate  perspective.^^  The  fact  here  is  that 
to  many  of  those  who  are  engaged  in  the  task  oFgovernment, 
the  problem  of  authority  is  either  unknown,  or  is  uncon- 
sciously set  in  terms  of  the  status  quo.  That  Duke  of  Newcastle 
who  desired  to  do  what  he  would  with  his  own,  was  probably 
completely  unaware  that  there  was  a  theory  of  the  state  in- 
volved in  his  attitude.  Queen  Victoria's  refusal,  in  1859,  to 
make  Mr.  Bright  a  Privy  Councillor  on  the  ground  that  "it 
would  be  impossible  to  allege  any  service  Mr.  Bright  has  ren- 
dered, and  if  the  honour  were  looked  upon  as  a  reward  for  his 
systematic  attacks  upon  the  institutions  of  the  country,  a 
very  erroneous  impression  might  be  produced  as  to  the  feeling 

87  "Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution."  "Works"  (World's  Classics, 
ed.),  Vol.  IV,  p.  66. 

88  Cf.  Mr.  Wallas'  comment,  "The  Great  Society,"  p.  332. 


52  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

which  the  Queen  or  her  government  entertain  towards  those 
institutions"^^  is,  in  reality,  an  expression  of  the  conviction 
that  the  middle  class  had  better  know  its  place,  and  not  meddle 
with  the  business  of  its  superiors.  The  implication  surely  is 
that  Bright's  long  attack  on  institutions  only  partially  democ- 
ratised was,  in  the  royal  opinion,  no  contribution  to  social 
improvement. 

In  every  phase  of  the  general  social  question  the  real  assump- 
tion is  the  belief  for  which  Burke  so  strenuously  argued.  "  Prop- 
erty," he  said,^"  ".  .  .never  can  be  safe  from  the  invasions 
of  ability  unless  it  be,  out  of  all  proportion,  predominant  in 
the  representation."  It  is,  as  he  said,  a  simple  truth  that 
"the  same  quantity  of  property  which  is,  by  the  natural  course 
of  things,  divided  among  many,  has  not  the  same  operation." 
But  that  is,  in  reahty,  to  argue  that  power  goes  with  the  dis- 
tribution of  property,  and  it  supposes  power  to  be  rightly 
used  only  where  it  is  exerted  in  the  interest  of  property.  In 
a  period  of  revolution  it  was  perhaps  natural  for  him  seriously 
to  over-estimate  the  dangers  to  which  property  is  subject. 
Mr.  Gladstone,  at  least,  was  less  fearful.  "There  is  a  saying 
of  Burke's,"  he  told  Lord  Morley,^^  "from  which  I  must  utterly 
dissent.  '  Property  is  sluggish  and  inert. '  Quite  the  contrary. 
Property  is  vigilant,  active,  sleepless;  and  if  it  ever  seems  to 
slumber,  be  sure  that  one  eye  is  open."  That  surely  is  the 
v.  lesson  of  history;  for  every  class  which  possesses  property 
X  \  will  claim  that  it  has  an  abstract  right  to  power.  Yet  Burke, 
\  more  than  any  man  of  his  time,  would  have  thought  little 
enough  of  so  abstract  a  claim ;  and  he  would  have  insisted  that 
the  real  test  of  property,  as,  therefore,  of  the  power  which  it 
controls,  is  the  way  in  which  it  functions.  * 

V.  THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  SECULAR  STATE 

In  our  own  time  it  is  in  general  felt  that  the  result  of  the  demo- 
cratic process  is  unsatisfactory.  The  authority  that  is  exerted 
in  the  name  of  the  state  fails  to  result  in  accomplishing  that 

89  Trevelyan,  "Life  of  Bright,"  p.  283. 

50  "Reflection  on  the  French  Revolution."    "Works"  (World's  Classics 
ed.).     VoLIV.,  p.  55. 

"  Morley,  "Life  of  Gladstone,"  III,  352. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  53 

for  which  the  state  exists.  It  is  into  the  cause  of  this  discrep- 
ancy that  we  are  examining.  Virtually,  the  answer  that  we 
make  is  an  insistence  upon  the  humanity  of  men.  "A  nation 
or  a  state,"  Professor  Dicey  has  written,^^  "means,  conceal  it 
how  you  will,  a  lot  of  individual  selves  with  unequal  talents 
and  in  reality  unequal  conditions,  and  each  of  these  selves 
does — or  rather  must — think  not  exclusively  but  primarily 
of  his  own  self.  The  old  doctrine  of  original  sin  may  be  totally 
disconnected  from  the  tale  of  Eve  and  her  apple,  or  any  other 
religious  tradition  or  theological  dogma,  but  it  represents  an 
undeniable  fact  which  neither  a  statesman  nor  a  preacher  can 
venture  to  ignore."  Certainly  even  if  we  make  no  assumptions 
as  to  the  psychological  factors  involved,  it  is  true  enough  thus 
to  urge  that  the  system,  social,  economic,  political,  under  which 
we  live,  emphasises  drastically  the  principle  of  self-interest. 
In  such  perspective,  the  object  at  which  the  state  aims  must  be 
made  superior  to  the  private  ideals  of  its  constituent  parts, 
except  insofar  as  they  coincide  with  that  larger  object.  And 
if  authority  is  thus  subject  to  exploitation,  it  must  be  subject 
to  limitation  also.  It  can  act  without  restraint  only  where 
its  end  is  in  fact  coincident  with  its  ideal  object.  Its  policy, 
that  is  to  say,  is  only  sovereign  where  it  is  serving  the  sover- 
eign purpose. 

That  raises  an  immediate  difficulty.  Upon  the  rightness  of 
its  pohcy  it  is  clear  that  doubt  may  exist.  On  the  theory  of 
taxation,  for  example,  there  is  a  clear  line  of  distinction  in 
England  between  the  Liberal  and  Conservative  parties.  Broadly 
speaking,  Liberalism  stands  for  direct.  Conservatism  for  in- 
direct taxation.^^  In  such  a  difference  there  is  no  ground  for 
repudiation  of  government  action  in  terms  of  revolution.  The 
special  tax  involved  might,  indeed,  well  have  such  consequence; 
resistance  to  a  head-tax  on  Roman  CathoHcs,  for  example,  is 
an  argument  not  difficult  to  justify.  The  point  at  which  re- 
sistance becomes  an  expedient  factor  is  not  a  matter  for  defi- 
nition or  prophecy;  it  will  vary  with  the  circumstances  of 
each  age.  All  we  can  say  is  that  at  times  in  the  history  of  a 
state  there  may  well  come  a  point  where  the  maintenance  of 

»^  "Law  and  Public  Opinion"  (2d  ed.),  p.  LXXX. 

"  Cf.  JSze,  etc.,  "Problemes  de  Politique  et  Finances  de  Guerre,"  p.  27. 


V' 


54  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

order  seems  to  some  group  of  men  worthless  as  an  end  compared 
to  achieving,  by  other  than  constitutional  means,  some  good 
deemed  greater  than  peace.  That  is  the  reservoir  of  anarchy 
of  which  resistance  to  oppression  is  the  most  fertile  source  of 
supply.  It  is  not  in  any  sense  a  denial  that  the  large  purpose 
of  the  state  is  supreme.  It  rather  insists  on  its  supremacy 
and  denies  that  character  to  governmental  acts  on  the  ground 
that  they  do  not  achieve  that  end  in  any  adequate  fashion. 
Nor  is  it  necessarily  an  arid  persistence  on  behalf  of  some  ab- 
stract theorem  remotely  capable  of  realisation.  It  is  not  for 
such  things  that  revolutions  have  been  made.  Most  men  who 
have  taken  part  in  practical  politics  will  admit  that  a  theoretic 
preference  for  an  abstract  system  does  not  involve  their  imme- 
diate effort  after  the  destruction  of  an  existing  government 
which,  on  all  reasonable  showing,  suits  the  conditions  of  its 
age.^* 

It  is  this  perhaps  that  best  sets  the  background  for  the  - 
constructive  answer  to  our  questions.  L^hat,  in  actual  fact, 
are  the  social  forces  over  which  the  power  of  the  state  ought 
not  to  be  extended?!  What  are  the  Umits  to  its  authority? 
In  what  way  ought  its  power  to  be  organised?  There  are  two 
obvious  kinds  of  limitation  to  be  discussed.  Both  are  connected 
with  the  fundamental  problem  of  liberty.  Its  definition  is 
perhaps  the^subtlest  question  the  political  philosopher  has  to 
confront.  |  The  truth,  of  course,  is  that  the  meaning  of  liberty,., 
will  vary  with  every  age.  Each  generation  will  have  certain 
things  it  prizes  as  supremely  good  and  will  demand  that  these, 
above  all,  should  be  free.  The  permanent  elements  of  liberty 
we  shall  hardly  know  until  some  inspired  investigator  gives 
us  that  history  of  which  Acton  dreamed.  To  our  own  genera- 
tion it  seems  almost  certain  that  the  insistence  upon  absence 
of  restraint  is  in  no  sense  adequatg, .  A  liberty  to  enslave  one's 
self  becomes  immediately  self-contradictory;  and  Mr.  Justice 
Holmes  has  finely  insisted,  in  one  of  the  most  significant  of 
his  opinions,  upon  the  intimate  connection  of  liberty  with 
equality.^^    Nor  does  Mill  really  aid  us  much  in  his  distinction 

"  Cf.  Gwynne  and  Tuckwell,  "Life  of  Sir  C.  Dilke,"  I,  177. 

^^  See  his  dissent  in  Coppage  v  Kansas,  236  U.  S.,  I,  26-7.  The  best 
defence  I  know  of  the  idea  of  hberty  as  absence  of  restraint  is  in  Seeley's 
"Introduction  to  Pohtical  Science,"  101  f. 


hL 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  55 

between  self -regarding  and  other-regarding  qualities;  uor  the 
fact  is  that  we  can  have  no  information  as  to  the  social  rele- 
vance of  any  act  until  we  consider  its  consequences.^*  f  When 
we  speak  of  freedom  as  something  to  be  highly  prized,"  said 
T.  H.  Green,^^  "we  mean  a  positive  power  of  doing  or  enjoying 
something  worth  doing  or  enjoying,  and  that,  too,  something 
that  we  do  or  enjoy  in  common  with  others."  That  is  more 
valuable  than  the  negative  conception  because  it  insists  on 
what,  in  this  age,  we  feel  to  be  fundamental  in  liberty — the 
power  of  adding  something  to  the  quality  of  the  common  life. 
But  it  does  not,  of  course — though  Green  had  elsewhere  an- 
swered that  question^^ — tell  us  what  it  is  worth  while  to  do 
or  to  enjoy;  and  here  again,  acute  difference  of  opinion  is 
possible.  It  was  as  a  historian  that  Acton  approached  the 
problem,  and  his  answer  had  a  connotation  not  to  be  mis- 
understood. "By  Hberty,"  he  said,^^  "I  mean  the  assurance 
that  every  man  shall  be  protected  in  doing  what  he  believes 
his  duty  against  the  influence  of  authority  and  majority,  cus- 
tom and  opinion."  To  a  practical  statesman  that  will  seem 
perhaps  a  counsel  of  perfection;  and,  certainly,  it  is  a  counsel 
that,  at  every  stage,  will  encounter  acute  difficulties  of  practical 
operation. 

It  yet  sets,  in  the  background  of  Green's  conception,  the 
idea  we_ need-of  the  internal  limitation  upon  the  action  of  the 
state.  It  insists  upon  the  greatest  truth  to  which  history  bears 
witness  that  the  only  real  security  for  social  well-being  is  the 
free  exercise  of  men's  minds.  Otherwise,  assuredly,  we  have 
contracted  ourselves  to  slavery.  The  only  permanent  safe- 
guard of  democratic  government  is  that  the  unchanging  and 
ultimate  sanction  of  intellectual  decision  should  be  the  con- 
science. ;We  have  here,  that  is  to  say,  a  realm  within  which 
thg's^iate  can  have  no  rights  and  where  it  is  well  that  it  should 
have  none.  No  state,  in  truth,  is  ever  firmly  grounded  that 
has  not  in  such  fashion  won  the  consent  of  its  members  to 

^^  Cf .  Prof.  Dicey's  comment.    "Law  and  Public  Opinion,"  p.  XXVIII. 

"  "Works,"  III,  371. 

^8  In  the  "Prolegomena  to  Ethics." 

S3  "History  of  Freedom,"  p.  3. 


56  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

action.  The  greatest  contribution  that  a  citizen  can  make  to 
the  state  is  certainly  this,  that  he  should.^ allow  his  mind  freely 
to  exercise  itself  upon  its  problems.  jWhere  the  conscience  of 
the  individual  is  concerned  the  state  must  abate  its  demands; 
for  no  mind  is  in  truth  free  once  a  penalty  is  attached  to  thought. 
Nor  will  consent  so  won  be  real  consent.  {  It  is  patent  to  the 
world  that  the  inexhaustible  well-spring  of  democratic  resource, 
as  against  any  other  form  of  government,  is  that  no  other 
system  can  be  certain  of  itself.  The  methods  by  which  an 
autocracy  must  secure  consent  are  today,  or  should  be,  tolerably 
well-known;  and  while  they  may  seem  at  times  to  have  the 
efficacy  of  poison,  they  result  always  in  death  or  violent  remedy. 
Freedom  of  thought,  then,  the  modern  state  must  regard 
as  absolute;  and  that  means  freedom  of  thought  whether  on 
the  part  of  the  individual  or  of  a  social  group.  Nothing  is 
more  stupid  than  for  the  state  to  regard  the  individual  and  it- 
self as  the  only  entities  of  which  account  must  be  taken,  or 
to  suggest  that  other  groups  live  by  its  good  pleasure.  That 
is  to  make  the  easy  mistake  of  thinking  that  the  activities  of 
man  in  his  relation  to  government  exhaust  his  nature.  It  is 
a  fatal  error.  The  societies  of  men  are  spontaneous.  They 
may  well  conflict  with  the  state;  but  they  will  only  ultimately 
suffer  suppression  if  the  need  they  supply  is,  in  some  equally 
adequate  form,  answered  by  the  state  itself.  And  it  is  tolerably 
clear  that  there  are  many  such  interests  the  state  cannot  serve. 
The  growth  of  reUgious  difference,  for  example,  makes  the 
state-adoption  of  any  religious  system  a  matter  of  doubtful 
expediency;  and  that  means,  as  has  been  before  insisted,  that 
the  internal  relations  of  churches  will  in  fact  deny  state-inter- 
ference. A  society  like  the  Presbyterian  Church,  which  recog- 
nises only  the  headship  of  Christ,  will  resist  to  the  uttermost 
any  external  attempt  at  the  definition  of  its  life ;  and  experience 
seems  to  suggest  t^at  the  state  will  lose  far  more  than  it  can 
gain  by  the  effort.  |  Where  the  fellowship  is  economic  in  nature 
the  problem  is,  indeed,  far  more  complex;  for  the  modern 
state  is  at  every  turn  an  economic  organisation.  But,  even 
here,  the  impossibility  of  absorption  is  shown  by  the  tragic 
history  of  such  things  as  the  Combination  Acts.  The  state 
may  well  exact  responsibility  for  the  thought  such  fellowships 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  57 

may  have  where  it  seeks  translation  into  action;  but  it  will 
estabUsh  its  exaction  only  where  the  individual,  himself  judg- 
ing between  conflicting  claims,  is  driven  to  feel  that  the  effort 
of  the  state  is  more  valid  than  the  other. 

That  is  to  say  that  for  the  state  there  are  found  subjects  of 
social  rights  and  duties.  They  are  not  the  creation  of  the  state; 
the  state  is  simply  an  organisation  existing  for  the  realisation 
of  an  end.  The  subjects  of  those  rights  are  sometimes  individual 
human  beings;  sometimes  they  take  the  form  of  fellowships 
of  men.  Those  fellowships  possess  a  personality  into  the  nature 
of  which  it  is  not  here  necessary  to  examine. '•'''  The  funda- 
mental fact  for  the  state  is  that  they  present  an  activity  that 
is  unified  and  must  be  treated  as  involving  the  possession  of 
rights.  But  the  individual  stands  above  and  outside  them. 
The  only  way  the  state  can  truly  prosper  is  by  sweeping  into 
itself  the  active  assistance  of  his  mind  and  conscience;  and  it 
will  succeed  in  that  effort  only  insofar  as  it  respects  them. 
Whatever,  therefore,  concerns  the  conscience  of  man,  what- 
ever brings  its  activity  into  operation,  must,  for  the  state,  be 
sacred  ground.  That  this  involves  difficulties  in  practice  is 
unquestionable.  But  if  the  action  of  the  vital  agency  of  gov- 
ernment arouses  such  conscientious  opposition  as  to  be  incapa- 
ble of  application,  it  seems,  to  say  the  least,  possible  that  it 
needs  re-examination  in  terms  of  its  moral  character.  If  a 
measure  has  so  wrought  upon  the  natural  political  inertia  of 
men  as  to  prick  them  into  insurgency,  it  has  probably  inter- 
preted with  maleficent  purpose  the  end  of  the  state.  Even 
where  the  opposition  is  small,  it  is  probable  that  more  is  gained 
by  the  possession  of  that  energy  of  character  which  is  willing 
to  offer  challenge  than  by  destroying  it.*'^^  A  state  which  op- 
presses those  who  are  antagonised  by  the  way  in  which  govern- 

^°°  The  bibliography  of  the  subject  is  enormous.  Its  most  fruitful  treat- 
ment seems  to  me  the  two  volumes  of  L^on  Michoud,  "Theorie  de  la  Per- 
sonnalit6  Morale,"  with  which  I  am  largely  in  agreement.  I  have  tried  to 
indicate  the  nature  of  the  problem  in  an  article  in  the  Harvard  Law 
Review  for  February,  1916. 

101 1  should  like  to  refer  to  Prof.  G.  Murray's  really  noble  introduction 
to  Mrs.  Hobhouse's  "I  appeal  to  Caesar,"  with  which  I  am  in  glad 
agreement. 


58  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

ment  interprets  its   purposes  is  bound  to   drift  slowly  into 
despotism. 

It  is  asserted  that  such  an  attitude  is  impractical.  A  man 
may  think  as  he  pleases;  but  opposition  to  government  is 
the  coronation  of  anarchy.  It  is,  to  say  the  least,  uncertain 
whether  the  assertion  is  so  formidable  as  it  appears.  Disorder 
may  be  better  than  injustice.  It  was  assuredly  better  for 
England  that  the  Civil  War  asserted  the  impossibility  of  the 
Stuart  claims  than  that  humble  obedience  should  be  offered 
to  them.     Every  government  is  a  de  facto  government  except^ 

[Insofar  as  the  Tightness  of  its  effort  makes  it  de  jure.  A  man 
ihas,  above  all,  to  be  true  to  himself;  for,  once  the  fatal  step 
is  taken  of  humbling  himself,  against  his  inner  promptings; 
before  the  demands  of  authority  the  way  to  acquiescence  is 
easy.  Nor  must  we  be  misled  by  the  effort  at  confusion  that 
is  implied  in  the  division  of  the  state  into  minority  and  ma- 
jority. The  lever  of  public  opinion  is  a  w^eapon  too  easily 
brought  into  use.  We  rarely  analyse  it  into  its  constituent 
parts.  We  rarely  estimate  how  far  a  majority-opinion  is  in 
fact  active  consent,  and  how  far  it  is  in  reality  no  more  than 

(the  inert  acquiescence  that  prefers  slumber  to  challenge.  In 
a  problem  like  religious  education,  for  example,  the  amount  of 
conscientious  and  instructed  opinion  on  either  side  is  small; 
and  the  real  truth  is  that  a  bill  like  Mr.  Balfour's  measure  of 
1903  wins  acceptance  rather  because  the  mass  of  men  is  unin- 
terested in  the  technical  problems  involved  than  because  the 
particular  solution  of  the  church  of  England  makes  to  them 
some  transcendent  appeal.  When  Sir  Frederick  Smith  can 
stigmatise  the  Welsh  Disestablishment  Act  as  "a  bill  which 
has  shocked  the  conscience  of  every  Christian  community 
in  Europe,"^°2  he  must  be  aware  that  the  phrase  is  no  more 
than  vulgar  rhetoric,  and  that  in  fact  any  estimate  of  the 
Act's  popularity  it  is  impossible  in  that  fashion  to  make.  In 
the  process  of  government  the  importance  of  this  inert  factor 
can  hardly  be  too  greatly  emphasised.  It  needs  some  vivid 
action  to  stimulate  to  resistance  a  body  of  men  large  enough 
to  make  its  presence  felt  in  the  state.  We  probably  tend 
seriously  to  underrate  the  effort  that  is  needed  to  embark  upon 
*o2  Cf.  Mr.  Chesterton's  "Poems"  (1914)  for  the  comment  on  this  remark. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  59 

such  resistance.  Certainly  the  remark  may  be  hazarded  that 
it  is  never  aroused  without  deep  causes  to  which  attention 
must  be  paid. 

The  assumption  here  made  is  that  every  individual  is  above 
all  a  moral  being  and  that  the  greatest  contribution  he  can 
make  to  the  state  is  the  effort  of  his  moral  faculties.  That  is 
in  reality  an  assistance  to  society.  A  state  in  which  the  con- 
sciences of  men  are  alert  and  energetic  will  hardly  embark 
upon  the  path  that  may  lead,  for  example,  to  the  invasion  of 
Belgium.  A  government  which  knows  the  existence  of  those 
consciences  will  hardly  allow  its  mind  to  wander  in  the  direction 
of  such  wrong.  It  is  when  there  has  been  systematic  training 
in  effortless  acquiescence,  that  there  is  the  easiest  opportunity 
for  injustice.  It  is  in  such  case  that  the  state,  perhaps  even 
civilisation,  may  feel  the  nemesis  of  that  docility.  In  that 
sense,  by  preventing  the  senses  of  men  from  being  so  sodden 
as  to  mistake  legality  for  moral  right,  we  have  the  surest  safe- 
guard against  disaster.  The  active  conscience  of  the  members 
of  a  state  acts  as  a  self-operating  check  against  perversion 
from  its  purposes. 

But  conscience  is  not  a  thing  which  reacts  instinctively  to 
any  set  of  circumstances.  It  needs  instruction.  It  has  to  be 
trained  into  the  fine  perception  of  the  complex  issues  by  which 
it  will  be  confronted.  The  mind  with  which  it  interacts  needs 
nourishment  to  be  energetic.  Here,  indeed,  is  the  significance 
for  the  state  of  Socrates'  great  plea  that  virtue  is  knowledge. 
An  untutored  people  can  never  be  great  in  any  save  the  rudest 
arts  of  civihsation.  Here,  again,  we  have  the  elements  upon 
which  to  base  a  hmitation  of  state-power.  No  state  can  through 
its  instruments  deny  education  to  its  members.  It  must  pro- 
vide them,  that  is  to  say,  with  means  at  least  adequate  to  a 
full  perception  of  life;  for,  otherwise,  the  purpose  of  the  state 
is  at  one  stroke  negatived  for  them.  Even  Adam  Smith  put 
education  among  those  activities  it  was  well  for  the  state  to 
undertake  j^"^  and  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  has  wisely  insisted 
that  the  growing  interest  of  the  workers  in  the  fruits  of  learning 
is  one  of  the  surest  tests  we  have  of  progress. ^"^     That  does 

"=»  "Wealth  of  Nations"  (Everyman's  ed.),  H,  269. 
'"^  "The  Great  Society,"  p.  302. 


GO  AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

not  condemn  the  state  to  any  particular  system.  It  does  not 
even  suggest  that  there  is  a  radical  wrong  in  giving  one  man 
the  advantage  of  a  classical  training  while  his  brother  is  sent 
to  a  technical  institute.  It  merely  suggests  that  the  provision 
of  some  agreed  minimum  of  what  is  adequate  to  the  purpose 
of  citizenship  is  essential  and  that  no  state  is  satisfactorily 
organised  where  this  condition  does  not  obtain.  It  is  the  more 
urgent  because  political  problems  are  so  vast  that  no  state, 
least  of  all  a  democracy,  can  hope  to  deal  with  them  unless 
each  member  is  sufficiently  articulate  to  transfer  the  judgment 
of  his  experience  to  the  increase  of  the  common  store.  "An 
autocratic  sultan,"  it  has  been  happily  remarked,^"^  "may  gov- 
ern without  science  if  his  whim  is  law.  A  plutocratic  party 
may  choose  to  ignore  science  if  it  is  heedless  whether  its  pre- 
tended solutions  of  social  problems.  .  .ultimately  succeed  or 
fail.  But  a  democratic  society  must  base  its  solutions  upon  the 
widest  possible  induction  open  to  its  members.  That  is  not 
less  American  experience. ^°^  Indeed,  it  may  be  claimed  that 
the  recent  experience  of  the  whole  world  has  very  strikingly 
demonstrated  the  need  of  associating  the  active  assistance  of 
men  with  the  policy  of  the  state;  and  it  has  been  found  that 
such  assistance  is  more  active  the  more  highly  it  is  trained. 
That  is,  in  fact,  to  emphasise  that  by  neglect  of  its  resources 
the  state  has  wasted  the  opportunity  of  their  richest  increase; 
and  that,  surely,  must  involve  the  erection  of  safeguards  against 
the  continuance  of  such  neglect. 

We  are  indicating  avenues  of  possible  approach  rather  than 
detaihng  the  exact  use  to  which  they  shall  be  put;  and  it  is 
perhaps  better  to  analyse  the  general  bearing  of  this  attitude 
than  to  catalogue  its  constituent  factors.^*^^  It  is  an  attitude 
which  primarily  suggests  that  the  study  of  social  life  will,  in 
any  scientific  perspective,  suggest  some  minimum  rule  of  social 
conduct.^"*     Immediately  the  interdependence  of  men  is  real- 

"^  '  'Report  of  the  Sub-Committee  of  the  British  Labour  Party,"  last 
paragraph. 

106  Q{  "The  Report  of  the  President's  Mediation  Committee  to  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States"  (1918),  p.  21. 

^"^  This  will  be  attempted  in  a  later  Avork  on  the  principles  of  politics. 

i»8  Cf.  Duguit,  "L'Etat  Le  Droit  Objectif,"  Ch.  II. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN    STATE  61 

ised  there  is  ethically  involved  the  notion  of  a  minimum  equal- 
ity. That  is  not  to  say  that  all  men  are  born  equal.  It  is 
simply  to  say  that  the  unity  involved  in  the  mere  concept 
of  social  purpose  must  prevent  the  unnecessary  degradation 
of  any  individual.  Nor  is  it  for  one  moment  to  suggest  that 
this  rule  of  conduct  is  an  unchangeable  thing.  The  needs  of 
each  age,  no  less  than  its  potentialities,  are,  of  necessity,  differ- 
ent; and  with  every  age  our  rule  of  conduct  will  therefore  vary. 
Nor  are  we,  like  Adam  Smith,  suggesting  the  existence  of 
"natural  laws  of  justice  independent  of  all  positive  institu- 
tion;"^"^ for  that,  in  truth,  is  to  put  ourselves  outside  the  realm 
of  scientific  speculation.  The  body  of  principles  which  can  ad- 
mit of  an  immutable  and  inflexible  application  to  poUtics  would 
be  so  generahsed  in  character  as  to  be  of  little  practical  worth. ^^° 
The  life  of  politics,  as  of  the  law,  lies  in  its  functioning.  Theft 
may  be  bad  and  punishable  by  law;  but  we  cannot  apply  the 
criminal  code  until  we  near  the  penumbra  which  surrounds  the 
case.  And  that  penumbra  may  well  make  the  principle  inappli- 
cable. What  we  do  is  to  deposit  hypotheses  that  have  come  to 
us  from  the  facts  of  Hfe;  we  declare  that  their  application  will 
enrich  the  content  of  the  social  life.  These  hypotheses  are  not 
the  mere  whims  of  chance  opinion.  We  cannot,  at  least  in  poli- 
tics, where  decision  is  necessary,  take  refuge  in  a  scepticism 
which,  logically  followed,  makes  conduct  impossible.  We  urge 
that  the  argument  for  one  principle  can  in  fact  be  better  than 
another.  It  is  today,  for  example,  broadly  believed  that  the 
case  for  factory  acts  is  stronger  than  the  case  for  industrial 
laissez-faire.  The  governmental  regulation  of  factory-condi- 
tions has  by  now  become  a  part  of  our  rule  of  political  conduct. 
That  has  not  been  universally  the  case.  But  our  experience  has 
grown  with  time  and  we  today  think  in  other  terms  than  the 
early  nineteenth  century.  When  the  hypothesis  that  sums  up 
such  a  general  experience  becomes  generally  enough  accepted 

"9  "Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments"  (ed.  of  1759),  p.  549.  A  theory  of  natu- 
ral law  independent  of  change  is  defended  by  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of 
the  younger  school  of  philosophical  jurists,  Professor  M.  R.  Cohen,  in  an 
article,  "Jus  Naturale  Redivivum,"  in  the.  Philosophical  Review  Yol.XXY, 
p.  761. 

""  Cf.  Mr.  Justice  Holmes  in  Lochner  v.  New  York,  198  U.  S.  45,  76. 


62  AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

it  gets  written  into  the  code  of  principles  that  we  in  general 
regard  as  beyond  the  realm  of  ordinary  discussion.  The  prob- 
lem here  is  not  very  different  from  the  growth  in  the  law  of  torts 
of  liability  without  fault.  We  have  penal  statutes  which  directly 
conflict  with  the  older  concept  of  that  category.  The  statutes 
aim,  for  social  reasons,  at  securing  the  mass  of  men  against  cer- 
tain dangers.  Workmen's  Compensation,  for  example,  throws 
the  burden  on  the  employer  in  the  belief  that  it  is  more  socially 
advantageous  for  the  burden  so  to  fall.  What  is  here  done  is  to 
withdraw  an  area  of  social  action  from  the  ordinary  concepts  of 
law  by  making  it  statutory.  It  places  a  statutory  clause — the 
provision,  in  certain  cases,  for  accident — as  one  of  the  conditions 
a  master  must  observe  if  he  wishes  to  engage  in  business."^ 
Workmen's  compensation  is  thus  simply  a  regulation  of  exper- 
ience. It  is  a  principle  withdrawn  for  the  general  good  from  the 
operation  of  industrial  competition.  The  general  rule  of  conduct  - 
is  in  nowise  different  save  that  its  substance  is  perhaps  more 
fundamental. 

That  is  the  sense,  for  example,  in  which  a  real  value  may  be 
attached  to  the  Bill  of  Rights  in  an  American  constitution. 
Misinterpreted  as  it  often  may  be,^^^  perverted  as  it  certainly 
has  been,  it  yet  testifies  to  the  vital  character  of  a  solid  body  of 
social  rules.  To  write  into  the  body  of  a  constitution  not  imme- 
diately accessible  to  amendment  principles  which  are  the  result 
of  social  experience  is  to  put  them  beyond  the  reach  of  ordinary 
mischance.  Nobody  who  has  at  all  examined  the  character  of 
American  political  life  can  doubt  that  this  vague  well-spring 
of  idealism  has  not  only  had,  but  still  potentially  possesses,  a 
profound  influence.  The  constitutional  provisions  against  an 
established  church,  for  instance,  are  of  course  derived  from  a 
bitter  experience  of  Anglican  persecution.  They  have  undoubt- 
edly prevented  the  growth  of  the  social  status  connected  in  Eng- 
land with  the  official  religion,  which  still  leaves  a  deep  mark 

"^  Cf.  my  paper  on  the  "Basis  of  Vicarious  Liability"  in  26  Yale  Law 
Journal  105  and  Cf.  Pound,  25  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  p.  1. 

^'^  For  the  way  in  which  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  has  been  misinter- 
preted, for  example  Cf.  CoUins,     "The  Fourteenth  Amendment  and  the 

States." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  63 

upon  English  life."^  The  way  in  which  every  state  constitution- 
ally insists  upon  the  subordination  of  the  military  to  the  civil 
power  is  the  safeguard  against  the  aggression  involved  breeding 
into  the  mind  of  a  people  the  thought  that  the  army  is  a  thing 
apart,  not  subject  to  the  rules  of  justice.  No  one  can  doubt  that 
Magna  Charta  means  to  an  Enghshman  something  that  is  not 
easily  to  be  over-emphasised;  sufficient,  indeed,  to  make  it 
possible  for  a  distinguished  judge  to  insist  that  only  the  specific 
declaration  of  Parliament  can  secure  its  annullment.^^^  The 
psychologic  background  of  provisions  such  as  these  is  an  im- 
mense preventive  against  the  abuse  of  authority.  They  give 
to  doctrines  the  arms  which  make  possible  resistance  to  oppres- 
sion. They  sanction  the  effort  of  legisative  idealism.  They 
represent,  however  vaguely,  the  moral  desperation  of  a  people. 
"A  poetical  adage"  may  not,  as  Bentham  sneeringly  said,"^ 
"be  a  reason;"  but  it  is  likely,  if  it  have  root  in  experience  to 
provide  one;  and  he  himself  goes  on  to  explain  to  what  vast 
results  a  simple  phrase  like  "mother-country"  may  give 
rise. 

Obviously,  of  course,  such  an  attitude  as  this  is  in  the  closest 
relation  to  the  modern  revival  of  natural  law."^  We  are  well 
enough  able  now  to  see  the  main  source  of  the  discredit  into 
which  it  fell  during  the  nineteenth  century.  It  had  tended,  in 
the  previous  age,  to  regard  the  problems  of  law  as  far  too  simple 
and  their  solutions  as  accordingly  at  hand.  It  shared  the  dis- 
credit which  the  dissatisfaction  with  the  French  Revolution 
inflicted  upon  an  optimistic  outlook.  It  was  too  highly  abstract 
and  too  little  careful  of  the  forms  of  law.  It  over-emphasised 
the  degree  to  which  reason  is  finally  operative  in  the  determina- 
tion of  an  adequate  ideal.     In  the  result,  as  Dean  Pound  has 

"^  For  the  remains  of  its  influence  in  Oxford  Cf .  Dicey,  "Law  and  Pub- 
lic Opinion,"  479-83. 

ii^Rex  V.  Halliday  (1917).  A.  C.  261,  294.  Cf.  my  comment  in  31 
Harvard  Law  Review,  296. 

i'5  "Theory  of  Legislation"  (translated  by  C.  M.  Atkinson),  Vol.  I,  p.  92. 

"*  On  this  cf.  the  great  essay  of  SaleUles,  "Ecole  historique  et  droit 
naturel"  in  Revue  Trimestriellede  droit  civil  1902, 1,  80-112.  ChsiTinont  "La 
Renaissance  du  Droit  Naturel." 


C- 


64V       AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 


shown,^"  the  pessimism  of  the  historical  school  triumphed  over 
what  seemed  as  more  than  a  metaphysical  miasma.  But,  in 
fact,  the  effort  made  by  the  theorists  of  natural  law  enshrined 
a  truth  of  which  too  great  neglect  is  possible. 

That  truth  consists  in  the  realisation  that  one  of  the  great 
mainsprings  of  human  effort  is  the  realisation  of  a  good  greater 
than  that  which  is  actually  existent.  The  eighteenth-century^ 
theorists  made  the  error  of  regarding  that  good  as  unchangeable. 
The  facts,  of  course,  proved  too  strong  for  so  rigid  an  outlook. 
But  this  insistence  upon  idealism  in  law  is  not  open  to  the  same-^ 
difficulty  if,  with  Stammler,  we  regard  the  ideal  of  natural  law  ] 
as  continually  changing  in  content.^^^  We  have,  as  he  has 
pointed  out,^^^  a  twofold  problem.    We  must  know  the  relation 

^  of  law  and  morals.  That  is,  of  course,  the  ordinary  problem  in- 
vestigated by  the  legal  philosophers.  It  is  not,  however,  the 
crux  of  the  question.    We  need  to  understand  how  a  legal  rule 

^  is  to  be  made  just  in  the  special  conditions  it  is  to  confront. 
That  is  a  purely  functional  problem.  It  is  clear,  for  instance, 
that  into  the  idea  of  justice  arbitrary  control  cannot  enter i^^" 
but  it  is  not  less  clear  that  opinion  may  differ  as  to  what  is  arbi- 
trary control.  Professor  Dicey,  for  example,  has  attacked  the 
French  system  of  administrative  law  as  fatal  in  practice  to  the 
triumph  of  objective  principles ;^^^  and  Maxime  Leroy  has  ex- 
pressed his  discontent  with  the  English  rule  of  law.^22  wr^at 
surely,  we  can  alone  admit  as  dogmatic  is  the  fact  that  justice 
is  somehow  to  be  attained  yet,  granted  the  fact  of  institutional 

f "^evolution  it  is  clear  that  the  content  of  justice  is  bound  to  vary. 
The  balance  of  forces  in  a  community  is  subject  to  sufficient 

1'^  "The  End  of  Law,"  30  Harvard  Law  Review,  p.  221.  I  owe  my  whole 
understanding  of  the  background  of  this  problem  to  the  really  noble  edifice 
Dean  Pound  has  erected  in  these  papers. 

*i*  See  above  all  his  "Lehre  von  dem  richtigen  Rechte"  and  his  "Wirth-       " 
schafts  und  Recht"  (2nd  ed.),  119.    "Lehre  von  clem  richtigen  Rechte,"  pp. 
13  ff.  120  Ibid  pp.  208-9. 

^"  "Lchre  von  dem  richtigen  Rechte."  pp.  13ff. 

'20  Ibid  pp.  208-9. 

'21  "Law  of  the  Constitution,"  Chap.  XII. 

'22  Libres  Entretiens  4me  series,  p.  368.  I  have  tried  to  deal  with  this 
question  in  some  detail  below. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  65 

variation  to  make  the  conflict  of  ideals  inevitable.     A  process 
of  internecine  selection  secures  the  triumph  of  some  attitude. 

This  theory  of  internal  limitation  upon  the  action  of  authority  J>^ 
is  essentially  a  pragmatic  one.  It  admits  that  any  system 
which  failed  in  practice  to  secure  what  is  largely  termed  the 
end  of  social  hfe  would  be  inadequate.  It  is  sufficiently  alive 
to  the  importance  of  stability  to  seek  to  place  the  fundamental 
notions  of  each  age  beyond  the  temptation  of  malicious  enter- 
prise. It  is  such  notions  that  we  have  termed  rights.  It  is  — 
such  notions  we  have  denied  the  power,  at  least  in  theory,  of 
government  to  traverse.  For  we  say  that  their  reaUsation  is 
essential  to  the  end  of  the  state;  and  government  is  itself 
only  a  means  to  that  end.  The  state,  in  fact,  must  limit  its 
instruments  by  the  law  of  its  own  being.  Sovereignty,  in  such 
an  aspect,  can  never  belong  to  the  government  if  we  term  it 
the  supreme  power  to  do  what  is  thought  necessary.  Govern- 
ment, it  is  clear,  will  have  a  power  to  will.  But  that  will  may 
'come  into  conflict  with  other  wills;  and  the  test  of  the  alle- 
giance it  should  win  is  the  degree  in  which  it  is  thought  to  be 
more  in  harmony  than  its  antagonists  with  the  end  of  social 
4ife. 

And  this,  it  is  clear  also,  envisages  a  pluralistic  conception 
of  society.  It  denies  the  oneness  of  society  and  the  state.  It 
insists  that  nothing  is  known  of  the  state-purpose  until  it  is 
declared;  and  it  refuses,  for  obvious  reasons,  to  make  a  priori 
observations  about  its  content.  It  sees  man  as  a  being  who 
wishes  to  realise  himself  as  a  member  of  society.  It  refers 
back  each  action  upon  which  judgment  is  to  be  passed  to  the 
conscience  of  the  individual.  It  insists  that  the  supreme  ar- 
biter of  the  event  is  the  totahty  of  such  consciences.  pfTdoes 
not  deny  that  the  individual  is  influenced  by  the  tnousand 
associations  with  which  he  is  in  contact;  but  it  is  unable  to 
perceive  that  he  is  absorbed  by  them.  It  sees  society  as  one  • 
only  in  purpose;  but  it  urges  that  this  purpose  has  in  fact 
been  differently  interpreted  and  is  capable  of  realisation  by 
more  than  a  single  method.  In_such  _aiL_analysis  the  state  is 
only  one  a,mong  many  forms  of  human  association.  It  is  not 
necessarily  any  more  in  harmony  with  the  end  of  society  than  a 
church  or  a  trade-union,  or  a  freemasons'  lodge.    They  have. 


66  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

it  is  true,  relations  which  the  state  controls;  but  that  does  not 
make  them  inferior  to  the  state.  The  assumption  of  inferi- 
ority, indeed,  is  a  fallacy  that  comes  from  comparing  different 
inamediate  purposes.  /  Moral  inferiority  in  purpose  as  between 
a  church  and  state  "there  can  hardly  be;  legal  inferiority  is 
either  an  illegitimate  postulation  of  Austinian  sovereignty,  or 
else  the  result  of  a  false  identification  of  state  and  society. 
The  confusion  becomes  apparent  when  we  emphasise  the  con- 
tent of  the  state..  When  we  insist  that  the  state  is  a  society 
of  governors  and  governed,  it  is  obvious  that  its  superiority 
can  have  logical  reference  only  to  the  sphere  that  it  has  marked 
out  for  its  own  and  then  only  to  the  extent  to  which  that 
sphere  is  not  successfully  challenged. ^^^ 

Here,  indeed,  is  the  source  of  a  serious  confusion  in  the 
recent  developments  of  the  neo-Hegelian  theory  of  the  state.^24 
"Will  not  force,"  said  Green,^^^  "is  the  basis  of  the  state." 
That,  in  a  sense,  is  true  enough;  but  it  obscures  the  real  prob- 
lem of  discovering  upon  what  will,  in  actual  fact,  the  policy 
of  the  state  is  based.  The  search  is  perhaps  an  endless  one. 
Certainly  we  must,  in  its  course,  bear  in  mind  Green's  own 
caution  that  "the  idea  of  a  common  good  which  the  state 
fulfils  has  never  been  the  sole  influence  actuating  those  who 
have  been  agents"  in  its  life.^^^  They  can  never  reahse  it, 
as  he  thinks,  except  in  some  imperfect  form.  Here,  surely, 
is  a  fundamental  point.  For  even  if  it  be  true  that  we  are 
watching  in  the  state  the  slow  process  of  a  growing  good  which, 
despite  error  and  wrong,  will  somehow  be  realised,  the  growing 
good  cannot,  by  sheer  assumption,  necessarily  be  said  to  be 
situate  in  one  set  of  men  rather  than  another.  That,  surely, 
is  a  matter  for  examination.    Few  would  now  be  found  to  urge 

123  Yor  an  interesting  suggestion  that  the  state  has  the  right  to  insist 
upon  fair  deahng  in  the  internal  life  of  other  societies  cf.  Professor  Sa- 
bine's review  of  my  book  in  the  Philosophical  Review  for  January,  1918. 

^^*  Particularly  in  Prof.  Bosanquet's  very  brilliant  volume  on  the  "Philo- 
sophical Theory  of  the  State."  I  may  perhaps  be  allowed  to  say  that 
criticism  does  not  preclude  the  recognition  that  this  book  is,  with  the  single 
exception  of  Green's  "Principles  of  Political  Obligation,"  the  greatest  con- 
tribution made  by  an  Englishman  to  political  philosophy  since   Mill. 

125  "Works"  II,  426  f. 

'^'Ibid.  434. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  67 

that  the  administration  which  ruled  England  after  the  peace 
of  1815  had  a  conception  of  good  denied,  for  instance,  to  Fran- 
cis Place  and  the  radicals. 

The  state  is  based  upon  will;  but  the  wills  from  which  its 
will  is  eventually  formed  struggle  amongst  each  other  for  sur- 
vival. The  idea  of  a  "general"  will  that  is  necessarily  good 
emerging  from  that  struggle  seems,  on  the  whole,  to  contribute 
but  little  to  our  understanding  of  the  event.  A  will  is  "good" 
if  it  is  a  good  will ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  any  character 
should  be  affixed  to  it  until  we  have  had  time  to  watch  it  in 
actual  operation.  That  was  the  merit  of  Green's  attitude.  He 
did  not  for  one  moment  deny  that  in  the  transition  from  theo- 
retic purpose  to  practical  realisation  a  significant  transforma- 
tion may  occur.  The  lofty  splendour  of  Mr.  Bradley's  "My 
Station  and  its  Duties"  may  well  suffer  translation  into  the 
station  of  the  Anglican  catechism.  It  is,  indeed,  the  inherent 
defect  of  idealism  that  it  never  enables  us  to  come  to  grips 
with  facts.  It  incurably  tends  to  blur  them  over.  It  thinks 
so  largely  in  terms  of  a  beneficent  teleology  as  to  soften  the 
distinction  between  political  opposites.  It  beatifies  the  status 
quo  by  regarding  each  element  as  an  integral  part  of  a  process 
which  it  insists  on  viewing  as  a  totality.  But,  in  the  heat  and 
stress  of  social  life,  we  cannot  afford  such  long-period  value. 
We  may  well  enough  regard  the  lean  years  after  1815  as  the 
necessary  prelude  to  the  great  reforms  of  the  thirties.  But 
that  does  not  make  them  the  less  lean.  We  may  urge  that 
society  is  in  fact  one  and  indivisible;  but  the  dweller  in  a  city- 
slum  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things,  transgress  the  unseen 
barrier  which,  for  him,  is  far  more  real  than  the  philosophic 
bonds  perceived  by  the  abstract  observer.  He  is  surely  to  be 
pardoned  if,  for  example,  he  regards  class  distinctions  as  real 
when  he  sees  the  tenacity  with  which  privileges  he  does  not 
share  are  defended.  He  may  well  insist  that  if  they  are  rela- 
tively necessary  to  the  construction  of  the  whole,  it  is  against 
that  whole  that  he  is  then  in  open  revolt. 

The  method  of  realism  has  at  least  the  merit  of  a  greater 
simplicity.  It  would  not  regard  the  South  African  war  as 
necessarily  good  because  the  Union  of  South  Africa  Act  has 
been  a  superb  triumph.     It  is  interested  in  judgments  upon 


68  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

the  links  of  a  chain  not  less  than  in  the  chain  itself.  Theoret- 
ically, it  can  perceive  how  every  act  may  move  in  unity  down 
the  endless  stream  of  time.  Practically,  it  insists  that  the  fact 
of  discontinuity  is  vital.  It  perceives  at  least  two  such  basic 
centres  of  discontinuous  action.  There  is  the  individual  mind. 
There  is  the  mind,  that  is  to  say,  of  man  considered  in  refer- 
ence to  personal  self-realisation  without  involving  in  that 
process  the  self-realisation  of  others.  There  is  the  group- 
mind  also.  There  is  the  mind,  that  is  to  say,  of  a  number  of 
men  who,  actuated  by  some  common  purpose,  are  capable  of 
a  unified  activity.  From  both  of  these,  in  their  myriad  forms 
there  of  course  proceed  acts  of  will.  If  a  "general  will"  meant 
anything,  it  would  only  mean  the  totality  of  those  wills  inso- 
far as  they  realised  the  general  social  purpose.  But  no  one 
knows  immediately  where  that  purpose  is,  by  some  individual 
act,  about  to  be  realised.  The  assumption  that  it  is  so  realised 
must  be  a  generalisation  not  from  purposes  but  from  results. 
An  Act  of  Parliament  may  differently  affect  different  men. 
Because  it  means  well  to  them  all,  because  it  achieves  good  as 
a  majority  of  legislators  conceive  it,  does  not  mean  that  in 
fact  it  is  therefore  good.  The  realist  interpretation  of  politics 
does  not,  for  one  moment,  insist  Upon  a  divergent  interest 
between  the  desires  that  have  secured  historic  fulfilment  and  the 
desires  that  would  have  secured  the  social  good.  But  it  does 
deny  the  idealist  contention  that  there  is  any  necessary  rele- 
vance between  them. 

From  that  twilight  world  it  is  surely  better  to  emerge.  Let 
us  judge  an  institution  not  by  its  purposes  but  by  its  achieve- 
ment in  the  terms  of  those  purposes.  J  Let  us  judge,  for  ex- 
ample, the  Roman  Catholic  Church  not  as  the  earthly  embodi- 
ment of  the  body  of  Christ  but  by  what  it  has  made  of  that 
body  in  the  history  of  its  earthly  form.  If  we  remember  St. 
Francis  we  must  not  forget  the  Inquisition ;  if  we  insist  upon  the 
wrong  of  Hus'  condemnation,  we  must  not  neglect  the  splendid 
ideals  of  the  Cardinal  of  Cusa.  We  have  to  remember,  in  brief, 
that  the  realisation  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  involves  the  holding 
of  property,  the  making  of  contracts,  the  appointment  of  offi- 
cers, the  determination  of  dogma.  The  fact  that  the  Pope  is  the 
vicar  of  Christ  does  not  exclude  scrutiny  into  the  details  of  his 


\ 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN  STATE  69 

election.  And  our  judgment  upon  the  state  must  be  in  similar 
terms.  The  step  is  easy  from  talkjof  state  to  talk  of  community, 
but  it  is  an  illegitimate  step.  The  state  may  have  the  noblest 
purpose.  The  objective  at  which  its  power  aims  may  be  un- 
questionable. But  it,  too,  at  every  moment,  is  acting  by  agents 
who  are  also  mortal  men.  The  basis  of  scrutiny  becomes  at  once 
pragmatic.  The  test  of  allegiance  to  estabhshed  institutions 
becomes  immediately  the  achievement  for  which  they  are 
responsible.  The  foundation  of  our  judgment  must  incessantly 
besought  in  the  interpretation  of  historic  experience.  We  know, 
at  least  in  general  terms,  the  aim  of  the  state.  We  can  measure, 
again  at  least  in  general  terms,  the  degree  of  its  divergence 
from  the  ideal  end.  /  That  is  why  no  method  is  at  all  adequate 
which  seeks  the'equation  of  the  ideal  and  the  real.  That  is  why 
the  first  lesson  of  our  experience  of  power  is  the  need  of  its 
liniitation  by  the  instructed  judgment  of  free  minds. 

VI.   THE  DIVISION  OF  POWER 

But,  after  all,  this  is  an  internal  limitation.  It  seeks  its  root 
less  in  any  formal  constitution  \hsin  in  the  effort  to  secure  in 
the  state  the  expression  of  a  certain  spirit.  It  is  in  no  sense 
a  full  safeguard  against  the  dangers  by  which  the  state  is 
consistently  confronted.  WeJiave  a.lsatojerect  a  more  positive 
and  external  limitation  upon  authority.  Not,  indeed,  that 
"such  machinery  alone  would  be  in  any  sense  an  adequate, 
thing.  No  system  of  government  has  been  yet  devised  not 
capable  of  perversion  by  maleficent  men.  It  cannot  be  too 
emphatically  insisted  that  important  as  may  be  the  policy  of 
any  government,  the  character  of  those  who  operate  it  is  hardly 
less  fundamental.  A  single  instance  will  perhaps  suffice  in 
demonstration.  No  one  denies  that  the  massive  ability  of 
Bismarck  puts  him  in  the  first  rank  of  statesmen  during  the 
nineteenth  century.  But  it  is  not  less  obvious  that  he  con- 
sciously acted  upon  a  system  of  political  principles  in  which 
the  ordinary  canons  of  ethics  played  no  part.  When  he  em- 
barked upon  his  campaign  against  sociaHsm  the  method  of 
which  he  availed  himself  was  the  deliberate  application  of 
principles  in  which  he  did  not  believe  and  to  which  he  had 
formerly  announced  his  opposition;    and  it  is  clear  that  those 


1 


70  AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

principles  became  different  by  reason  of  the  spirit  he  infused 
into  their  apphcation.  Half  the  difficulty  of  democratic  govern- 
ment consists  in  the  choice  of  leaders;  and  in  a  quasi-democ- 
racy  where,  as  in  Germany,  leadership  is  imposed  from  above, 
ideas  that  may  in  one  context  be  admirable,  will,  in  their  new 
atmosphere,  serve  only  as  a  dangerous  soporific.  Few  things 
have  been  more  easy  than  for  an  able  and  energetic  govern- 
ment, which  was  willing  to  pay  the  price,  to  bribe  a  whole 
people  into  slavery.  Here  is  a  matter  where  rules  of  any  kind 
are  simply  inapphcable.  There  are  a  thousand  elements  in 
the  problem;  and  no  student  of  political  psychology  can  avoid 
the  admission  that  we  have  hardly  approached  even  the  be- 
ginnings of  a  satisfactory  solution.^-^ 

When  the  choice  of  governors  has  been  made,  the  question 
yet  remains  of  confining  them  to  the  business  for  which  they 
have  been  chosen.  We  have  so  to  arrange  the  machinery  of 
the  state  as  to  secure  not  merely  the  most  efficient  safeguard 
against  its  perversion  from  theoretic  purpose,  but  also  to  ob- 
tain the  fullest  promotion  of  that  end.  Here  is  the  real  hinter- 
land of  political  enquiry;  for  the  one  obvious  method  by  which 
the  past  sought  refuge  from  the  dangers  of  authority  has  proved 
in  fact  delusive.  That  method  was  the  separation  of  powers. 
It  was  from  the  time  of  Aristotle  conceived  that  the  elements 
of  public  business  admit  of  a  natural  classification  into  legis- 
lative, executive,  and  judicial. ^^^  The  danger  of  combining 
the  two  latter  was  forcibly  insisted  upon  by  Bodin;^^^  and 
Locke  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to  point  out  the  value  of 
their  active  and  general  separation. ^^°  But  it  was  Montesquieu 
who,  basing  his  attitude  upon  a  mistaken  interpretation  of  the 
English  constitution,  first  urged  that  the  separation  of  powers 
is  the  secret  of  liberty. ^^^  Supported  by  his  immense  authority, 
the  idea  was  everywhere  propagated  with  eagerness;  and  in 
France  and  America  especially  its  truth  was  accepted    with 

'2'  I  have,  of  course,  to  deal  with  this  problem  in  a  later  volume  on  the 
theory  of  politics. 

128  "Pontics,"  IV,  14,  1297b. 

129  "De  la  Repubhque,"  I.  X. 

"0  "Second  treatise,"  Sees.  143-6. 

"1  "Esprit  des  Lois,"  Bk  XI,  Chap.  6. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  71 

enthusiasm.  The  constitutions  of  the  Revolutionary  assera- 
bUes  wrote  the  principle  into  the  fabric  of  the  French  state. "^ 
In  America  the  constitutions  both  of  the  federation  and  its 
constituent  parts  unhesitatingly  adopted  it.  Madison  in- 
sisted that  the  "accumulation  of  all  powers  ....  in 
the  same  hands  ....  may  justly  be  pronounced  the 
very  definition  of  tyranny, "^^^  ^nd  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  asserted  such  separation  to  be  "one  of  the  chief 
merits  of  the  American  system."^'* 

It  is  in  fact  a  paper  merit  for  the  simple  reason  that  in  prac- 
tice it  is  largely  unworkable.  Cromwell  discovered  that  to 
his  cost;^^^  and  there  has  been  no  state  in  which  methods  have 
not  been  used  to  break  down  the  theoretic  barriers.  In  France 
the  judiciary  has  largely  been  regarded  as  a  delegate  of  the 
sovereign  governmental  power.  In  America  the  development 
of  the  standing-committee  in  Congress  provided  a  simple  sys- 
tem of  communication  between  the  cabinet  and  the  legislature. 
In  Massachusetts,  even  before  the  war  of  independence,  the 
powerful  "Junto"  of  Boston  practically  made  itself  an  execu- 
tive committee.^^®  The  truth  is  that  the  business  of  govern- 
ment does  not  admit  any  exact  division  into  categories.  It 
has  been  found  increasingly  necessary  to  bestow  judicial  powers 
upon  English  government  departments.^"  The  system  of  pro- 
visional orders  may  depend  upon  a  genial  fiction  of  generous 
delegation ;  but  if  the  work  of  the  Local  Government  Board 
is  not,  in  this  particular,  legislation,  there  is  nothing  that  is 
worthy  of  that  name.  "The  work  of  a  taxing  department 
today,"  the  chairman  of  the  Board  of  Customs  told  a  recent 
Royal  Commission,^^^  "is  an  absolutely  different  thing  from 

"2  Cf.  Duguit,  "La  Separation  des  Pouvoirs"  and  Esmein's  classic 
discussion.  "Elements  du  Droit  Constitutionnel"  (3rd  ed.).  pp.  358  f.  The 
most  general  treatment  is  that  of  Saint-Girans,  "Essai  sur  la  separation  dcs 
pouvoirs"  (1884). 

133  The  Federalist,  No.  46. 

"^  Kilbourne  v.  Thompson,  103  U.  S.,  188. 

"5  Cf .  Esmein's  analysis,  Revue  de  Droit  Public,  1899,  p.  8  f. 

136  Harlow.    "Legislative  Methods  in  the  Period  before  1825,"  p.  25  f. 

"7  Cf.  Prof.  Dicey's  "Comment,"  31  Law  Quarterly  Review,  p.  150. 

138  "Fourth  Report  of  the  Royal  Commission  on  the  Civil  Service,"  1914, 
Cd.  7338,  p.  28. 


72  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

what  it  was  twenty  or  even  ten  years  ago.  In  those  days  Par- 
Hament,  when  it  fixed  a  tax,  settled  every  detail,  leaving  to  the 
department  only  the  administration  of  the  tax  on  the  lines 
laid  down  by  Parliament.  The  tendency  of  Parliament  now- 
adays .  .  .  .  is  to  lay  down  only  principles,  leaving 
matters  of  difficulty  to  the  discretion  of  the  department.  I 
think  it  fair  to  say  that  a  department  like  mine  nowadays  exer- 
cises powers  which  are  often  judicial  and  which  sometimes  get 
very  near  being  legislative."  Nor  must  Professor  Dicey 's 
insistence  on  the  value  of  judicial  legislation  be  forgotten. ^^* 

No  one,  moreover,  who  has  watched  at  all  carefully  the 
development  of  the  English  cabinet  in  recent  years  can  mis- 
take the  evident  tendency  of  the  executive — a  tendency  of 
course  strengthened  by  the  fact  of  war — to  escape  from  Par- 
liamentary control. ^^^  It  is  not  less  significant  that  both  In- 
surance and  Development  Acts  have  given  quasi-legislative 
and  fully  judicial  powers  to  commissions  who  are  expressly 
excepted  from  the  ordinary  rules  of  law.^"*^  This  evolution, 
whether  or  no  it  be  well-advised,  surely  bears  testimony  to 
the  breakdown  of  traditional  theory.  The  business  of  govern- 
ment cannot  in  fact  be  hampered  by  the  search  after  the  exact 
branch  into  which  any  particular  act  should  fall.  And  it  may 
even  be  urged  that  recent  American  history  bears  testimony 
to  the  further  conclusion  that  the  breakdown  of  the  doctrine 
has  nowhere  proved  unpopular.  Certainly  an  external  observer 
sees  no  sign  of  lament  over  the  Presidential  control  of  Con- 
gress ;^^^  and^iere  has  been,  in  recent  years,  a  clear  tendency 
in  England  to  look  for  the  active  sovereignty  of  the  state  out- 
side of  Parliament.  We  have  in  fact  come  to  believe  that  the 
loss  in  formal  independence  may  well  be  compensated  by  a 
gain  in  the  efficiency  of  government 

The  theory  yet  contains  an  important  truth  of  which  per- 
haps too  little  notice  has  been  taken  in  our  time.     We  have 

"9  "Law  and  Public  Opinion"  (2d  ed.),  pp.  483  f. 

^*°  See  the  very  interesting  debate  in  Hansard,  Fifth  Series,  Vol.  92, 
p.  1363  f. 

i«  Cf.  Dicey,  "Law  and  Pubhc  Opinion"  (2d  ed.),  pp.  XXXIX-XLIV, 

"^  Cf.  my  note  in  The  New  Republic  on  the  "Future  of  the  Presidency" 
in  the  issue  of  September  29,  1917.  k 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  73 

become  so  accustomed  to  representative  government  as  to 
realise  only  with  difficulty  the  real  basis  of  its  successful  opera- 
tion. It  presupposes  an  educated  and  alert  electorate  which 
is  continually  anxious  for  the  results  of  that  system.  It  ought 
not  to  involve,  as  it  has  within  recent  years  so  largely  involved, 
a  divorce  between  the  business  of  government  and  the  knowl- 
edge of  its  processes.  Aristotle's  definition  of  citizenship  as 
the  "sharing  in  the  administration  of  justice  and  offices "^^^ 
implies  the  understanding  of  some  sense  now  lost — that  active 
participation  in  affairs  of  state  will  alone  cause  adequate  per- 
formance even  of  the  humblest  civic  function,  [j'ower,  that  is 
to  say,  which  is  largely  concentrated  at  a  single  political  centre 
will  produce  a  race  of  men  who  do  not  display  interest  in  its 
consequences.  In  some  sort  that  is  a  fact  that  lies  at  the  root 
of  our  problemsTj  And  it  is  important  simply  because  the  lib- 
erty of  a  state  depends  so  largely  upon  the  situation  of  power. 
We  realise  this,  for  example,  in  our  awareness  of  the  danger  of 
star-chamber  methods;  we  look  with  suspicion  upon  executive 
justice.^^  We  insist  that  the  independence  of  the  judiciary 
is  fundamental  to  Hberty.  It  is  only  within  recent  years  that 
the  French  courts  have  been  able  to  free  themselves  from  a 
narrow  worship  of  governmental  power.  The  supposed  devia- 
tion of  its  activities  from  a  theoretic  sovereignty  made  govern- 
ment intolerably  careless  of  its  ways  and  means.^^^  The  simple 
rule  that  no  man  shall  be  judge  in  his  own  cause  stands  as  one 
of  the  few  really  fundamental  truths  of  political  science.  And 
the  emphasis  upon  division  of  powers  leads  to  the  perception 
of  what  is  becoming  more  and  more  obvious  as  the  facts  of 
social  life  become  more  widely  known.  We  are  beginning  to  see 
that  authority  should  go  where  it  can  be  most  wisely  exercised 
for  social  purposes.  That  is  to  say  that  there  is  no  natural 
control  inherent  in  the  state.  It  is  to  suggest,  for  example, 
that  it  may  be  wise  to  put  certain  avenues  of  social  effort  out- 

i«  "Politics,"  III,  1,  1275  a. 

1"  Cf.  Pound,  "Address  to  the  New  Hampshire  Bar  Association,"  June 
30,  1917. 

i«  Cf .  Duguit,  "Les  Transformation  du  Droit  Public,"  Ch.  VII.  In  this 
respect  at  least  Professor  Dicey's  strictures  upon  administrative  law  seem 
to  me  unanswerable. 


74  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

side  the  control  of  the  state  legislature.  It  is  to  argue  that, 
conceivably,  industrial  enterprise  is  better  settled  by  those 
who  are  engaged  in  it,  than  by  the  representatives  of  certain 
geographical  areas  with  no  necessarily  expert  knowledge  of  the 
problems  involved. 

(^  It  is  thus  no  rigid  classification  of  power  upon  which  insist- 
ence is  laid.  Power  is.  regarded  simply  as  the  right  to  will  acts 
of  general  reference,  and  the  suggestion  is  made  that  it  should 
be  conferred  where  it  is  probable  that  it  can  be  most  usefully 
exerted.  In  this  aspect  it  becomes  not  unlikely  that  we  have 
-m  the  past,  over-emphasised  the  necessity  for  its  concentra- 
tion at  a  single  point  in  the  social  structure.  We  have  been  so 
concerned,  particularly  as  lawyers,  in  demonstrating  the  para- 
mountcy  of  the  state,  that  we  have  taken  too  Httle  regard  of. 
the  life  Uved  outside  its  categories.  We  ought  rather  to  seek 
a  different  perspective.  What  is  alone  essential  is  the  fullest 
achievement  of  the  general  social  purpose.  What  is  at  once 
then  evident  is  the  necessity  of  organising  authority  with  a 
view  solely  to  that  end. 

j  Such  an  organisation  implies  a  conception  of  society  as  basic- 
'  ally  federal  in  nature.  In  that  sense  the  paramount  character 
of  the  state  is  iyso  facto  denied.  For  if  it  is  once  clear  that 
there  are  regions  into  which  the  state  cannot  usefully  enter,  it 
is  obvious  that  there  are  realms  over  which  its  authority  ought 
not  to  be  exerted.  That  is  to  foreshadow  a  division,  not  of 
powers,  but  of  power  upon  the  basis  of  functions.  It  is  to  pic- 
ture a  society  in  which  authority  is  not  hierarchical  but  co- 
ordinate. Nor  is  the  basis  of  its  definition  in  any  sense  matter 
of  a  priori  definition.  It  must  change  as  social  necessity  may 
demand.  It  must  have  in  constant  view  the  possibiUty  of  inno- 
vation not  less  vast,  for  example,  than  that  produced  by  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  or  that  which  seems  involved  in  the 
\      more  recent  experience  of  war. 

To  insist  upon  the  federal  nature  of  society  is  less  paradoxical 
than  may  at  first  sight  appear.  Thirty  years  ago,  indeed, 
Seeley  pointed  out  that  the  difference  between  federal  and 
unitary  states  was  valuable  only  "as  marking  conveniently 
a  great  difference  which  may  exist     ....     in  respect 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE       ,   .5 

.^ irr?* 


of  the  importance  of  local  government  ;"^''^  and,  indeed,  the 
difference  here  between  England  and  the  United  States  is 
hardly  greater  than  the  difference  between  England  and  France. 
What  is  true  here  of  the  state  is,  of  course,  even  more  accurate 
of  society  as  a  whole;  and  once  we  regard  the  state  merely  as 
one  of  its  constituent  parts,  however  fundamental,  what  be- 
comes obvious  is  the  fact  that  its  dominion  must  be  strictly 
relevant  to  the  problem  of  what  purposes  it  can  best  fulfil. 
Indeed,  much  of  the  problem  has  been  greatly  o})scurod  by 
thinking  of  federalism  not  in  terms  of  a  division  of  functions 
upon  some  rough  basis  of  useful  performance  but  in  terms  of 
territorial  contiguity.  Such  a  reference  is,  of  course,  intelli- 
gible enough.  Everyone  understands  why  so  vast  an  area  as 
the  United  States  involves  some  system  of  decentralisation. 
The  attempt  to  govern  territories  so  diverse  as  Arizona  and 
New  York  by  uniform  methods  would  be  fraught  with  disaster. 
The  facts  geographically  refuse  such  reduction  to  unity.  The 
problems  of  government  are  in  each  case  so  diverse  that  their 
local  study  and  solution  alone  proves  efficacious. 

The  same  necessity  has  been  increasingly  apparent  in  the 
relations  between  Great  Britain  and  her  daughter-nations.  It 
has  become  obvious  that  the  complex  of  interests  we  call  Canada 
and  Australia  can  be  better  governed  from  Ottawa  or  from  Mel- 
bourne than  where,  as  in  the  first  part  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
commands  radiated  outwards  from  a  single  centre  at  Whitehall. 
"Government  from  Downing  Street"  came  to  have  a  sinister 
import  simply  because  the  interests  involved  were  not  less  real 
and  self-sufficing  than  the  interests  of  the  empire  to  which  they 
belonged.  The  conference  of  self-government  was  bound  to 
follow  immediately  the  truth  became  apparent  that  the  pos- 
session of  kindred  interests  by  a  group  of  men  will  sooner  or 
later  involve  the  self-management  of  those  interests.  The 
reasons  are  manifold  enough.  Downing  Street  was,  in  the  first 
sixty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  literally  unable  to  cope 
with  the  complex  problems  that  confronted  it;  and  the  attempt 
to  construct,  as  notably  in  the  colonial  administration  of  Lord 

'""i  "Introduction  to  Political  Science,"  p.  95.  The  whole  lecture  is  most 
instructive. 


76  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Grey/"*^  an  uniform  and  equal  policy  for  things  that  were 
neither  equal  nor  uniform  was  bound  to  result  only  in  constant 
and  dangerous  irritation.  Nor  was  it  for  long  conceivable  that 
community  like  Australia  would  be  content  to  leave  the  centre 
of  its  ultimate  political  power,  in  any  sense  save  that  of  legal 
dignity,  outside  the  chief  residence  of  its  economic  interests. 

It  is,  indeed,  argued  that  within  these  territories  unity  is 
bound  in  some  sort  to  develop."^  In  the  United  States,  at 
least,  this  has  in  no  sense  been  the  case.  What,  in  truth,  may 
be  urged  is  that  the  original  distribution  of  power  has  not  fitted 
the  development  of  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years.  But  it  is 
surely  true  in  America  that  what  is  developing  is  less  complete 
unity,  as  in  France,  as  the  emergence  of  new  administrative 
areas.  It  is  probable  that  the  historic  system  of  state-govern- 
ment has,  in  many  cases,  broken  down;  but  that  has  not  in- 
volved the  disappearance  of  the  fundamental  idea.  It  would  be 
clearly  impossible  to  force  such  conflicting  interests  as  those  of 
agriculture  and  industry  into  a  kind  of  Hegelian  harmony  by 
the  over-simple  device  of  legislating  from  Washington.^^^  Nor 
is  this  less  true  of  Canada.  No  observer  of  its  conditions  can 
fail  to  note  the  way  in  which,  commercially,  the  wheat-produc- 
ing territory  of  the  West  is  developing  a  system  antithetic  to 
that  of  the  industrial  East;  and  it  is  at  least  not  improbable 
that  the  West  is  destined  to  swing  over  the  balance  of  political 
power  exactly  as  in  the  United  States.^^"  But  in  both  countries 
the  real  need  is  not  for  less  local  government,  but  for  more.  In 
both  countries  one  of  the  real  sources  of  danger  has  been  to 
develop  a  kind  of  local  stagnation  by  regarding  Ottawa  and 
Washington  as  reserve  powers  which  could  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  a  recalcitrant  community.  What  is  at  least  as  evident  is 
the  failure  of  recent  centralisation  to  solve  the  administrative 
problems  involved.  It  is  continually  found  that  they  are  in 
fact  not  simple  and  general,  but  specialised  and  local;   and  the 

"^  Cf.  his  two  curious  volumes,  the  "Colonial  Policy  of  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell's administration"  (London,  1853). 

i^s  As  Prof.  Dicey  argues,  '"Law  of  the  Constitution"  (8th  ed. — ),  p. 
LXXVI. 

"9  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  Appendix  B. 

160  Cf    p    J    Turner,  American  Historical  Review,   Vol.   XVI,  p.  217. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN    STATE  77 

spectacle  of  a  harassed  official  at  Washington  trying  to  adjust 
the  thousand  varying  strands  the  size  of  America  involves,  is 
not  more  exhilarating  than  to  see  how  the  Congress  permits  of 
dangerous  manipulation  in  the  interests  of  locality.^^* 

There  is,  in  fact,  a  fundamental  principle  involved  in  such  an 
attitude  upon  which  too  much  insistence  can  hardly  be  laid.  It 
is  the  truth  that  in  administration  there  is  a  point  at  which,  for 
every  increased  attribute,  an  obvious  diminution  of  efficiency  >^ 
results.  Where  a  government  department  is  overloaded  with 
work  what  it  will  tend  to  do  is  to  pay  attention  not  to  the  par- 
ticular circumstances  of  the  special  problem  involved,  but  to  its 
general  ruling  in  broad  cases  of  the  kind.  There  is  bound  to  be 
delay  and  the  price  of  delay  in  such  matters  it  is  difficult  to  over- 
estimate. Groups,  in  fact,  must  be  treated  as  independent  units  j 
living,  however  minutely,  a  corporate  life  that  gives  birth  to 
special  considerations.  The  official  at  London  can  hardly  enter  (1 
so  closely  into  the  unique  penumbra  of  a  Manchester  enquiry 
as  fully  to  satisfy  it.  What  he  will  do  is  to  look  up  the  records 
of  his  department  and  apply  some  rule  laid  down  for  similar 
conditions  at  Liverpool.  This  has  been  strikingly  illustrated  in 
our  own  day  by  the  reports  of  the  British  Commissions  on  in- 
dustrial unrest.  The  attempt,  as  the  commissioners  for  the 
North  West  discovered, ^^^  "to  regulate  every  petty  detail  of  the 
industrial  machinery  of  the  area  from  offices  at  Whitehall  im- 
poses upon  the  men  who  are  asked  to  work  it  an  impossible 
task.  The  trenches  of  industrial  warfare  are  in  Lancashire 
....  it  is  not  a  business  proposition  to  try  and  command  the 
great  industrial  army  of  these  areas  with  a  staff  200  miles  from 
the  base  ....  there  is  overcentralisation  and  ....  this  is  a 

cause  of  unrest It  should  be  considered  whether  it 

would  be  possible  not  only  to  leave  employers  and  workmen  to 
settle  more  matters  themselves,  but  to  arrange  that  high  offi- 
cials ....  should  live  in  the  area  and  be  within  close  touch 
....  at  the  earliest  possible  moment."  Hardly  less  suggestive 
was  the  conclusion  of  the  American  Commission  which  had  the 
same  problem  in  view.    Here,  indeed,  the  industrial  control  was 

1"  Cf.  Beard,  "American  Government  and  Politics,"  p.  269  f. 
'52  Report  ("Bulletin  237  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labour"),  p.  49.    Cf. 
p.  77,  110,  118,  185,  214. 


78  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

private  and  not  public  in  nature;  but  it  was  again  insisted  that 
"distant  ownersliip  ....  creates  barriers  against  the  oppor- 
tunity of  understanding  the  labour  aspects,  the  human  problems 
of  the  industry,  and  solidarity  of  interest  among  the  various 
owners  checks  the  views  of  any  one  liberal  owner  from  prevail- 
ing against  the  autocratic  policy  of  the  majority. "^^^  In  a  still 
larger  industry  the  same  difficulty  is  noted.  "The  element  of 
distance,  creating  managerial  aloofness,  thus  played  a  very 
important  part.  For  the  employees,  the  labour  policy  of  *  the 
company'  was  what  local  officials  in  towns  distant  from  the 
executive  offices  made  it,  and  not  what  the  general  officers  in 
San  Francisco  might  have  wished  it  to  be;  distance  insulated 
the  general  offices  from  intimate  knowledge  of  industrial  rela- 
tions of  the  Company.  The  bonds  of  confidence  and  co-opera- 
tion between  company  and  employees  were  therefore  tenuous. 
Moreover,  the  fact  that  the  company,  despite  its  bigness,  was 
part  of  a  national  system,  qualified  all  solutions  of  labour  diffi- 
culties by  consideration,  on  the  part  of  the  company,  of  the 
bearing  of  such  solution  however  intrinsically  irrevelant,  upon 
other  parts  of  the  country.  "^^* 
/." 
It  is  so  baffled  by  the  very  vastness  of  its  business  as  necessarily 
to  be  narrow  and  despotic  and  over-formal  in  character.  It 
tends  to  substitute  for  a  real  effort  to  grapple  with  special 
problems  an  attempt  to  apply  wide  generaUsations  that  are 
in  fact  irrelevant.  It  involves  the  decay  of  local  energy  by 
taking  real  power  from  its  hands.  It  puts  real  responsibility 
in  a  situation  where,  from  its  very  flavour  of  generality,  an  un 
real  responsibility  is  postulated.  It  prevents  the  saving  grace  of 
experiment.  It  invites  the  congestion  of  business.  And  all 
•^1  this  is  the  more  inevitable  where,  as  in  the  modern  democratic 
I  state,  the  responsibility  for  administration  Hes  not  in  the  hands 
i  of  the  civil  service  but  in  the  statesmen  who  hold  office.  What 
is  thereby  engendered  is  an  attempt  not  so  much  to  provide  solu- 
1  tions  as  to  evade  them.  In  a  great  strike,  for  example,  govern- 
j  ment  arbitration  will  not  mean  so  much  a  genuine  effort  after 
justice  as  the  purchase  of  a  solution  on  any  terms.    That  is  in 

^**  Report  of  the  President's  Commission,  p.  4. 
15^  Ibid.,  p.  10. 


izx    This,  is,  in  fact,  the  inherent  vice  of  centralised  authority 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  79 

the  nature  of  things  inevitable.  Where  basic  industries  are  con- 
cerned the  government  knows  full  well  the  unpopularity  that 
will  attend  it  if  there  is  any  interference  with  the  normal 
process  of  consumption.  In  industry  as  a  whole,  the  govern- 
ment is,  from  the  nature  of  things,  interested  in  the  main- 
tenance of  order  and  it  knows  well  enough  that  the  main- 
tenance of  order  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  duration  of  the  strike. 
What  it  is  driven  thus  to  do  is  to  seek  the  manipulation  of 
disharmony  that  its  credit  may  be  thereby  least  injured.  And, 
at  the  worst,  it  may  suffer  itself  to  be  used  for  the  purpose  of 
one  of  the  contending  parties.  Where  picketing,  for  instance, 
is  concerned,  the  knowledge  that  government  stands  for  a 
certain  theory  of  order,  necessarily  operates  to  minimise  the 
strength  of  the  men.^^^ 

It  is  noteworthy  in  this  connection  that  the  most  highly 
centralised  of  modern  states  should  have  reahsed  the  inade- 
quacy of  its  system.  The  most  striking  development  of  France 
in  recent  years  is  towards  an  increase  of  administrative  decen- 
tralisation. The  causes  of  this  change  are  profound.  Very 
largely,  it  is  due  to  the  increasing  dissatisfaction  of  the  civil 
service  with  Parliamentary  control  ;^^^  and  that  has  heralded 
the  commencement  of  an  effort  at  the  conference  of  respon- 
sibility outside  the  traditional  categories.  The  decentralisa- 
tion of  higher  education  is  particularly  interesting  in  view  of 
its  success.^"  The  erection  of  certain  public  services  into  auton- 
omous establishments  with  separate  budgets  has  not  excluded 
governmental  control;  but  it  has,  by  the  association  in  their 
operation  of  non-governmental  interests,  involved  a  real  change 
in  the  atmosphere  of  their  f  unctioning.^^^  Nor  is  it  at  all  doubt- 
ful that  the  revivification  of  local  life  after  the  war  is  one  of  the 
first  problems  by  which  the  new  France  will  seek  the  renewal  of 
its  former  richness.^^^* 

'^s  Cf.  the  remarks  of  Mr.  Cole,  "Work!  of  Labour,"  Ch.  IX. 

i6«  Cf .  Chapter  V  below. 

'"  Hauriou,  "Principes  de  Droit  Pubhc"  (1916),  pp.  745  f. 

1*8  Cf .  Hauriou,  "Precis  de  Droit  Administratif,"  p.  342  f  (ed.  Cf.  1914), 
and  Michoud,  "Theorie  de  la  Personnalite  Morale,"  Vol.  II,  Ch.  VII,  esp. 
Sees.  247-54. 

"*^Cf.  the  interesting  essay  of  Lachapelle,  "L'Oeuvrede  Demain"  (1917). 


l^ 


80  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Such  decentralisation  is  fundamental  enough;  for  it  can 
/    hardly  be  too  earnestly  insisted  that(tp  place  the  real  centre  of 

\  y/A  political  responsibility  outside  the  sphere  in  which  its  conse- 
quences are  to  operate  is  to  breed  not  only  inefficiency  but 
indifferenc^  The  only  way  to  make  municipal  life,  for  example, 
an  adequate  thing  is  to  set  city  striving  against  city  in  a  con- 
sistent conflict  of  progressive  improvement.  A  man's  pride 
in  being  a  citizen  of  London  or  New  York  can  only  be  made 
real  by  giving  to  London  and  New  York  the  full  responsibility 
of  self-government.  The  only  way  in  which  a  new  and  needed 
interest  in  the  problems  of  such  areas  can  be  achieved  is  by 
giving  to  those  who  handle  them  the  full  power  of  effective 
achievement.  What,  in  despite  of  trammels,  an  able  man  can 
in  this  particular  accomplish  Mr.  Chamberlain  demonstrated 
in  the  case  of  Birmingham.  And  it  is  surely  evident  that  by 
such  a  process  we  do  much  to  relieve  the  congestion  of  public 
business  which  today  stifles  the  public  departments.  Nor  need 
we  fear  parochialism.  That,  in  truth,  is  the  offspring  of  a 
time  when  distance  had  not  been  annihilated  by  the  improve- 
ment of  transportation.  It  is  possible  today  to  go  from  Man- 
chester to  Liverpool  in  less  than  the  time  in  which  London 
itself  can  be  traversed.  When  neighbouring  example  is  thus 
contiguous  a  narrowly  local  sense  is  but  a  figment  of  pessi- 
mistic imagination.  And  with  such  a  change  what  we  open 
up  is  one  of  the  fundamental  sources  of  training  in  the  busi- 
ness of  government.  When  the  last  word  has  been  said  about 
"vestry-narrowness,"  or  the  pettiness  of  local  affairs,  it  is 
/    surely  evident  that,  in  truth,nhe  real  guarantee  of  adequacy 

"^  in  national  affairs  is  the  proper  performance  of  public  func- 
tions in  a  smaller  sphe^n  That  has  been  one  of  the  great 
advantages  of  the  federal  system  in  the  United  States.  Mr. 
Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Hughes  in  New  York,  Mr.  Wilson  in  New 
Jersey,  proved  their  fitness  for  high  national  office  by  service 
of  a  kind  that  demonstrated  their  ability  to  handle  public 
issues.  And  it  is  at  least  not  impossible  that  one  day  a  similar 
qualification  will  be  demanded  as  the  basis  of  membership  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  It  seems,  to  say  the  least,  not  un- 
likely that  the  trained  servant  of  a  municipality  will  prove  a 
fitter  member  of  that  Chamber  than  a  young  and  freshly  inno- 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  81 


cent  peer  whose  triumphs  have  before  been  confined  to  the 
debating  societies  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge. 

VII.    THE  ORGANISATION  OF  POWER 

This  at  least  indicates,  even  while  it  does  not  touch,  the  real 
heart  of  the  problem.     Its  crux  is  the  position  of  the  state 
relative  to  that  of  other  groups  within  society.    What  wc  have  ; 
thus  far  denied  is  the  claim  of  the  state  to  represent  in  any 
dominant  and  exclusive  fashion  the  will  of  society  as  a  whole. 
It  is  true  that  it  does  in  fact  absorb  the  vital  part  of  social 
power;   but  it  is  yet  in  no  way  obvious  that  it  ought  to  do  so.  ^^ 
It  is  in  no  way  obvious  immediately  it  is  admitted  that  each   i 
individual  himself  is  in  fact  a  centre  of  diverse  and  possibly 
conflicting  loyalties,  and  that  in  any  sane  political  ethic,  the  real 
direction  of  his  allegiance  ought  to  point  to  where,  as  he  thinks 
the  social  end  is  most  Ukely  to  be  achieved.    Clearly  there  are 
many  forms  of  association  competing  for  his  allegiance.  Clearly, 
also,  the  vast  part  of  them  express  the  effort  of  men  to  achieve 
the  broad  aim  of  social  existence.     Labour  associations  aim 
at  the  control  of  production  because  they  beUeve  that  with 
its  passage  into  their  hands  the  life  of  the  masses  will  be  richer 
and  more  full.     Religious  associations  are  the  expression  of  a 
conviction  that  to  accept  certain  dogmas  is  to  secure  induction 
into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.     The  state,  as  we  hav^seenT"   /^ 
is  in  reality  the  reflexion  of  what  a  dominant  group  or  class  in  a  ^^ 
conimumtyI^elie3^(^~tcrbg' political  good.     And,  in  the  main,   ^^ 
it.  is  reasonably  clear  that  political  good  is  tOcTSy  ior  the  most 
part  defined  in  economic  tefRI^    It^^liirQllIwSEirritself,  that  i) 
is  "to  sayT'the  ecoiii£y[£,  structure  of  society7~~Tris^  relatively 
unimportant  in  what  fa^Eioh  we  organise  the  institutions  of 
the  stated    Practlcally^they  will  reflect  the  prevaihng  economic    / 
systeni|_practically  alsoTthey  will  protect  li.  £^ie_0£inion  of  /y 
the  state,  at  least  in  its  legislative  expression,  will  largely  re-  \ 
produce  the  opinion  of  UTose  who  irold- the  keys~or"economic 
pow^^~Tbefe'is7TTid5ed,~inr-part  of"tlTe~co^^^  of  which 

economic  power  is  unable  to  influence  the  opinions.  Not  that 
it  will  be  an  absolute  control  that  is  exerted  by  it.  The  English 
statute-book  bears  striking  testimony  to  the  results  of  the 
conflict  between  the  holders  of  economic  power  and  those  who 


/ 

82  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

desire  its  possession;  and,  often  enough,  there  has  been  gen- 
erous co-operation  behind  the  effected  change.  But  the  funda- 
mental truth  remains  that  the  simple  weapons  of  politics  are 
alone  powerless  to  effect  any  basic  redistribution  of  economic 
strength. 

That  is  to  say  that  the  political  organisation  of  a  state  may 
well  disguise  its  true  character.  The  liberal  and  conservative 
parties  in  England,  the  republican  and  democratic  parties 
in  the  United  States,  do  not  the  less  represent  a  capitalist 
control  of  politics  because  they  are  national  parties.  Mr. 
Osborne's  dislike  of  a  labour  party  with  a  political  programme 
did  not  prove  a  general  truth  that  the  historic  lines  of  party- 
division  in  England  represent  a  satisfactory  alignment  of  eco- 
nomic power  to  the  working-man.  It  did  not  prove  that 
there  was  in  fact  a  possible  harmony  of  interest  between  trade- 
unions  of  which  the  dominant  purpose  was  the  control  of  in- 
dustry in  the  interests  of  democratization  and  employers  who 
deny  the  utility  of  such  control.  It  is  true  that  the  labour 
party  has  entered  politics;  and  it  has  been  argued  with  some 
plausibility^^^  that  it  ought  by  the  slow  conversion  of  the  elec- 
torate to  its  creed  to  arrive  by  a  slow  evolution  at  the  control 
of  the  processes  of  the  state.  But  that  analysis  is,  in  fact, 
entirely  unreal.  It  mistakes  the  important  truth  tha^\3be 
interests  to  which  the  House  of  Commons  attends  is,  in  reality, 
the  interests  of  consumers  as  those  are  capable  of  being  har- 
monised with  the  demands  of  the  prevalent  economic  systein] 
The  interest  of  the  constituencies  of  the  House  of  Commons 
is  predominantly  in  the  regular  functioning  of  economic  proc- 
esses. They  want  a  proper  postal  service,  or  railway  system, 
exactly  as  the  citizens  of  a  municipality  will  look  to  the  town- 
council  for  gas  and  tramways  and  electricity.  With  the  internal 
organisation  of  industrial  affairs  they  will  not  concern  them- 
selves save  as  disharmony  will  force  them  to  the  recognition 
of  their  importance.  Sometimes,  indeed,  a  sudden  fit  of  hu- 
manitarianism,  as  in  the  Trade-Boards  Act,  will  result  in  legis- 

169  By  Mr.  A.  E.  Zimmern  in  The  New  Republic,  September  15,  1917. 
Cf.  Mr.  Croly's  article  in  the  same  issue,  and  the  editorial  comment  on 
Mr.  Zimmern's  letter.  Mr.  Zimmern's  rejoinder  is  to  be  found  in  an  arti- 
cle on  "Freedom  and  Unity"  in  the  Round  Table  for  December,  1917. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  83 

lative  control.    But,  primarily,  it  is  in  regularity  of  industrial  hss* 
service  that  the  House  of  Commons  and  government  are  above 
all  interested.    And,  as  a  careful  observer  has  pointed  out,  this 
is  ^edominantly  true  of  local  government.'^" 

'"When,  therefore,  the  functions  of  the  state  undergo  close 
scrutiny,  it  is  found  that  the  aspect  upon  which  they  concen- 
trate their  work  is  the  use  by  the  community  of  industrial 
resources!\   It  is  not  interested  in  the  processes  of  production 
as  such;    it  concerns  itself  in  securing  due  provision  from  in- 
dustry for  the  needs  of  society.    It  deals  with  men  in  the  capac- 
ity that  is  common  to  them  all.    It  regards  them  as  the  users 
of  certain  goods.    It  is  uninterested  in  men  as  engaged  in  any 
function  save  that  of  consumption  except,  of  course,  insofar 
as  the  performance  of  their  duties  hinders  the  achievement  of 
its  own  basic  effort.     Clearly,  for  instance,  the  state,  through 
its  government,  would  be  vitally  interested  in  a  railway  strike; 
for  it  is  vitally  interested  in  securing  to  the  members  of  they 
state  the  uninterrupted  use  of  railway  facilities.    But  an  anaU  /-•' 
ysis  of  the  part  played  by  the  government  in  settlements  or  "^^ 
industrial  disputes  can  hardly  fail  to  suggest  that  the  primary    -^ 
concern  of  the  state  is  not  in  the  cause  of  the  dislocation,  but 
in  the  dislocation  itself.'^""   Causes  are  important  only  insofar 
as  they  seem  to  imply  a  renewal  of  disturbance.    In  that  aspect 
the  relation  of  the  state  to  a  member  of  the  railway  unions  is 
very  different  from  its  relation  to  the  ordinary  member  of  the 
public.  VEpr  its  main  concern  with  the  trade  unionist  is  to  get  i/ 
him  back  to  work;   whereas  that  at  which  he  aims  is  some  re- 
distribution of  economic  power  within  a  group  only  the  results 
of  whose  functionings  concern  the  state  as  a  who^^ 

That  is  why  it  is  impossible  to  regard  the  state  as  capable, 
in  anygeneraTytewT-tjf  labsorbi  ng  the  whole  loyalty  of  an  in- 
diyidual.  ~Tt~can  only  secure  his  loyalty  insofar  as  he  does  not 
think  that,  in  the  given  situation,  the  railway  union  has  in 
fact  a  superior  claim.    It  is  just  as  possible,  for  instance,  for 

160  Cole,  "Self-Government  in  Industry,"  p.  77.  With  much  of  Mr.  Cole's 
chapter  on  the  state  I  should  find  myself  in  admiring  agreement,  though 
with  certain  changes  of  fundamental  emphasis. 

i6oa  -ptjjg  ig  avowedly  the  motive  underlying  the  Canadian  Industrial 
Disputes  Investigation  Act. 


84  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

a  man  to  make  the  decision  that,  balanced  against  the  industrial 
dislocation,  the  end  of  a  railway  strike  is  worth  the  cost,  as 
it  is  to  conclude  that  the  sacrifices  of  a  great  war  are  worth 
the  great  price  they  involve  if  the  result  safeguards  the  Uberty 
'  xj  of  nations.  [At  a  stroke,  inJjnefj^the.Merarchical  structure  of 
^P  society  is  demolisKed^    "We  have,  instead,  a  series  of  co-ordinate 
'  "     groups  the  purposes  of  which  may  well  be  antithetic)^    What 
"       has  happened  in  the  histofjroflihe  state  is,  on  the  contrary, 
the  assertion  that  it  enjoys  a  unique  position  for  its  power.    It 
claims  the  right  to  judge  between  conflicting  associations  and 
to  interpose  its  will  between  them.     It  claims  that  the  rights 
of  societies  other  than  itself  are,  in  fact,  within  its  gift;    and 
their  existence  is  conditioned  by  its  graciousness.     The  fear 
of  group-persons  in  English-history  is  at  least  as  old  as  Richard 
of  Devizes  ;^^'^  and  Blackstone  only  put  into  legal  form  the  con- 
,  i\     tempt  that  Hobbes  had  poured  upon  them.^^^     "With  us  in 
■^   '^.  England,"  he  said,^^'  "the  king's  consent  is  absolutely  necessary 
A  to  the  creation  of  any  corporation";    and  the  Combination 
,'     Acts  are  the  proud  vindication  of  the  state's  claim  to  exclusive- 
\       ness.    But  here,  as  elsewhere,  life  in  fact  overflows  the  narrow 
categories  in  which  the  dogmas  of  state-sovereignty  would 
enshrine  it.    The  truth  is  more  and  more  apparent  that  these 
groups  live  a  life  of  their  own,  and  exist  to  support  purposes 
that  the  state  itself  fails  to  fulfil.    From  this  it  was  that  Mait- 
land  drew  the  obvious  conclusion.     "Some  would  warn  us," 
he  wrote  in  a  famous  sentence,^^*  "that  in  the  future,  the  less 
we  say  about  a  supralegal,  suprajural  plenitude  of  power  con- 
centrated in  a  single  point  at  Westminster — concentrated  in 
one  single  organ  of  an  increasingly  complex  commonwealth — 
the  better  for  that  vision  may  be  the  days  that  are  coming." 

1"  Richard  of  Devizes'  "Chronicle  416."  Cf.  Stubbs'  "Const.  Hist."  (6th 
ad.),  I,  455. 

1^2  On  the  early  history  of  the  English  corporation  cf  my  paper  in  the 
Harvard  Law  Review,  Vol.  XXX,  p.  561. 

i«3  Com.  I,  472. 

^"^  Introduction  to  his  translation  of  Gierke's  "PoHtical  Theories  of  the 
Middle  Age,"  p.  XLIII.  On  some  of  the  difficulties  that  the  "Concession" 
theory  must  encounter  cf.  my  paper  on  the  "Personality  of  Associations," 
in  the  Harvard  Law  Review,  Vol.  XXX,  p.  404. 


\  I      (  .yv —  " — v^ 

^  s  ^  ■  /  "^  J 

AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE  85 

It  is  no  more  than  that  vision  we  are  seeking  to  translate  into 
the  event. 

If,  then,  we  view  the  state  as  primarily  a  body  of  consumers 
whose  will,  over  the  course  of  history,  has  been  largely  controlled 
by  groups  within  itself,  it  clearly  follows  that  the  producer 
who  does  not  share  in  the  ownership  of  means  of  production 
must  safeguard  his  special  interest  in  his  personal  function. in 
such  fashion  as  will  prevent  its  subordination  to  the  purposes 
of  government.  So,  too,  and  in  another  sphere,  a  Roman 
Catholic  must  arm  himself  lest  his  interest  in  his  church  be 
unjustly  attacked  by  a  state  that  has  made  with  some  alien 
religious  body  an  alUance  for  reciprocal  assistance.^^^  The 
main  value  of  his  church,  indeed,  must  for  him  consist  in  the 
fact  that  because  it  is  a  church  it  gives  him  a  guarantee  he 
could  not  otherwise  possess  against  the  invasion  of  a  religious 
interest.  For_theJndiyidual  is  lost  in  a  big  world  unless  there 
are  fellowships  to  guard  hini;.^nd  even  those  associations  may 
welT^rove  powerless  unless  they  deny  that  their  rights  are 
sta,te-derived.  Excommunication,  for  example,  would  not  seem 
to  Imn'sTsentence  open  to  the  revision  of  a  state-court.^^®  This 
is  in  no  sense  a  denial  of  membership  of  the  state.  It  is  merely 
an  insistence  that  the  aspect  in  which  he  is  related  to  his  church 
is  an  aspect  different  from  his  relation  to  the  state.  The  spheres 
of  each  are,  in  his  own  mind,  distinct;  the  powers  of  each  are 
then  divided  in  the  light  of  that  separation.  In  the  Presby- 
terian Church,  again,  no  denial  is  made  of  the  supremacy  of 
the  state  in  civil  matters;  but,  said  Chalmers,  "in  things  eccle- 
siastical we  decide  all.^^^  "  Here,  again,  the  emphasis  is  upon 
co-ordinate  function.  What  is  essentially  denied  is  the  deriva- 
tion of  church  rights  from  the  grace  of  the  state. 

The  position  of  trade-unionism  is  in  the  closest  relation  to 
this  attitude.  It  is  held  that  the  purpose  of  that  movement 
emphasises  an  aspect  of  the  worker's  life  which  is  different 

^^  Or,  as  in  France,  the  non-Catholics  may  have  to  aim  to  prevent  the 
state  from  becoming  a  branch  of  the  Roman  CathoHc  Church. 

^^^  Cf.  the  very  interesting  opinions  in  St.  Vincent's  Parish  v.  Murphy, 
83  Nebraska  630,  and  Parish  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  v.  Murphy, 
89  Nebraska,  524. 

'"  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  39. 


^ 


86  AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

from  the  aspect  emphasised  by  the  state.  The  trade-union  is 
concerned  with  the  business  of  production;  the  state  is,  above 
all,  concerned  with  the  general  regularity  of  the  supply  for 
consumption.  What,  then,  the  trade-union  is  compelled  to 
deny  is  the  subordination  of  the  function  he  fulfils  as  a  producer 
to  his  interest  in  the  supply  of  his  needs.  It  is,  in  any  case, 
painfully  clear  that  the  state  does  not  in  any  full  sense  secure 
that  supply.  It  ensures  production;  but  the  distribution  of 
the  product  is  weighted  in  the  interest  of  those  who  wield  eco- 
nomic power.  That  is  the  main  reason  why  the  worker  sees  in 
the  productive  process  a  lever  that  will  react  upon  the  state 
itself.  True  poHtical  democracy  is,  as  he  reahses,  the  offspring 
of  true  industrial  democracy.  If  he  were  to  admit  the  para- 
mount character  of  the  consumptive  process  no  strike  would 
ever  occur.  But,  obviously,  the  judgment  is  constantly  made, 
and  that  in  industries  of  basic  importance,  that  the  attainment 
of  a  new  equilibrium  in  industrial  relations  is  worth  the  heavy 
price  invariably  paid  for  it.  The  worker,  that  is  to  say,  is  no 
more  inclined  than  the  Roman  Catholic  to  admit  the  supremacy 
of  the  context  in  which  the  state  is  placed.  He  refuses  to  regard 
it  as  in  any  permanently  valid  sense  the  sovereign  representa- 
tive of  the  community.  He  bases  his  refusal  upon  the  behef  that 
the  results  of  its  functioning  bear  witness  to  a  grave  malad- 
justment. It  is  used  to  support  a  status  quo  with  which  he  is 
dissatisfied.  He  might  even  urge  that  the  new  equilibrium 
at  which  he  is  aiming  is  worth  more  to  the  community  than 
the  fulfilment  of  what  the  state  at  present  regards  as  its  duties  in 
the  consumptive  process. 
/^  Here,  immediately,  a  division  of  power  is  implied.  The 
/^  business  of  consumption,  it  is  suggested,  is  proper  material 
^  for  the  authority  of  the  state.  It  is  immediately  a  matter 
where  the  interests  of  men  in  their  capacity  of  consumers  may 
be  taken  as  substantially  equal;  at  least  in  the  sense  that 
there  are  certain  goods  a  minimum  supply  of  which  is,  for  each 
individual,  essential  to  social  existence.  But  somewhere  be- 
tween production  and  consumption  a  line  must  be  drawn.  The 
interests  of  men  in  production  are  rarely  equal  because  the 
share  of  its  results  suffers  widely  varying  distribution.  There 
is  a  broad  distinction,  for  example,  between  the  interest  of  the 


UA^V  ' 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE  87 

owner  of  capital  and  the  interest  of  the  unproperticd  worker. 
There  is  at  present,  also,  a  distinction,  which  the  sectionalism 
of  trade-unions  makes  unfortunately  manifest,  between  skilled 
and  unskilled  labour.^^^  There  is  a  clash  of  interest,  at  least 
in  certain  trades,  between  the  male  and  female  labour  em- 
ployed. ^^^  It  is  probable,  indeed,  that  sectional  antagonism 
within  the  labour  movement  is  capable  of  removal  by  wise 
activity;  and  certainly  the  great  English  amalgamations  of 
recent  years,  most  notably  that  of  the  transport  workers, 
point  increasingly  in  this  direction. 

But  between  the  interest  of  capital  and  that  of  labour  it  is 
difficult  to  see  any  permanent  basis  of  reconciUation.  They 
want  antithetic  things.  When  the  utmost  that  a  capitaUsm 
can  concede  is  measured,  it  still  falls  short  of  what  labour  de- 
mands; for  the  ultimate  object  of  labour  activity  is  democratic 
self-government  in  industry,  the  determination,  that  is  to 
say,  of  the  methods  to  be  employed  at  each  stage  of  the  produc- 
tive process,  the  settlement  of  tasks  and  hours  and  wages  by 
the  men  themselves.  It  involves,  therefore,  the  disappearance 
of  a  super-imposed  hierarchical  control.  It  takes  the  trade- 
union  as  the  single  cell  from  which  an  entirely  new  industrial 
order  is  to  be  evolved.  In  such  an  aspect,  the  suspicion  of 
labour  towards  a  state  that  is  predominantly  capitaHst  in 
character  is  inevitable.  For  whether  the  state,  through  its 
instruments,  seeks,  by  maintaining  order,  to  prevent  the  possi- 
bility of  redistribution;  whether  it  attempts  to  discover  some 
possible  basis  of  temporary  reconciUation;  what  always  emerges 
from  either  synthesis  is  the  determination  of  labour  to  use  the 
equilibrium  so  created  as  the  foundation  of  a  new  effort  towards 
its  ultimate  objective.  The  method  of  which  use  is  made  may 
vary  but  the  purpose  is  unchanging. 

Labour,  therefore,  could  admit  the  complete  sovereignty  of 
the  statF^hTy  if  it  could  be  assumed  that  the  state  were  on 
its  side.  The  only  thing  of  which  it  can  in  this  context  be  cer- 
tain is  that  the  power  of  the  state  will  be  predominantly  exerted 

168  Cf.  Cole,  "World  of  Labour,"  Chs.  VII  and  VIII.  What  is  said  here 
of  over-lapping  is  even  more  true  of  the  United  States  than  of  England. 

16^  On  the  general  problem  cf.  Webb,  "The  Restoration  of  Trade  Union 
Conditions"  (1917). 


88'^     AUTHORITY   IX   THE   MODERN   STATE 

S^ainst  its  interest.  For  the  social  order  of  the  modern  state 
isnot  a  labour  order  but  a  capitalist,  and  upon  the  broad  truth 
of  Harrington's  hypothesis  it  must  follow  that  the  main  power 
is  capitalist  also.  That  will  imply  a  refusal  on  labour's  part  to 
accept  the  authority  of  the  state  as  final  save  where  it  is  satis- 
fied with  its  purposes.  It  means  that  it  will  endeavor  so  to 
organise  the  process  of  production  as  to  hand  over  the  chief 
authority  therein  to  the  trade-unions  which  express  its  inter- 
ests. It  means,  in  short,  the  conquest  of  productive  control 
by  labour;  and  when  that  control  has  been  conquered  it  is 
not  likely  that  it  will  be  easily  surrendered.^^" 

What,  on  the  contrary,  is  possible  is  that  some  adjustment 
will  be  slowly  made  between  the  groups  which  represent  the 
interests  of  producers  and  the  state,  in  all  its  constituent  local 
parts,  as  representing  the  consumer.  We  do  not  admit,  that 
is  to  say,  the  attitude  of  the  anarchist  who  denies,  like  Wilham 
Godwin,  the  need  for  authority  at  all,^^^  or  the  attitude  of  the 
syndicaHst  who  emphasises  only  the  producer's  interest.  The 
case  against  syndicalism  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  has  felicitously 
expressed  in  a  single  sentence.  "It  proved  to  be  more  import- 
ant", he  has  written,^^^  ''that  under  syndicahsm  men  loved 
each  other  less  as  citizens  than  that  they  loved  each  other  more 
/as  gild-brothers."  We  cannot,  in  fact  risk  the  possij^ility  of 
\y  disorganisation  upon  the  basis  of  narrow  selfishness,  Vjlowever 
the  productive  process  is  in  the  future  arranged  within  itself 
provision  must  be  made  for  some  central  authority  not  less 
representative  of  production  as  a  whole  than  the  state  would 
represent  consumption.  There  is  postulated  therein  two  bodies 
similar  in  character  to  a  national  legislature?!  Over-great  pres- 
sure of  consumer  on  producer  is  avoided  by  giving  to  the  pro- 
ducers as  a  whole  a  legislature  where  the  laws  of  production 
would  be  considered.  The  legislature  of  the  consumers  would 
decide  upon  the  problems  of  supply.    Joint  questions,  in  such 

^"  I  am  not  here,  of  course,  concerned  to  point  out  the  steps  by  which  this 
control  is  to  be  achieved;  but  I  have  indicated  in  the  next  section  some  of 
the  more  obvious  directions  along  which  it  is  moving. 

1^'  A  reprint  of  his  "PoHtical  Justice"  is  an  urgent  need. 

172  "The  Great  Society,"  p.  328.  See  the  whole  passage  from  p.  324 
onwards. 


i 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  89 

a  synthesis,  are  obviously  matter  for  joint  adjustment.  Nor 
is  the  central  authority  within  either  division  to  be  envisaged 
as  uniquely  sovereign.  Certain  functional  delimitations,  the 
cotton-trade,  the  mining-industry,  the  railways,  shipping, 
immediately  suggest  themselves.  From  the  consumer's  stand- 
point, municipaUties,  counties,  even  whole  areas  like  the  North 
of  England,  may  have  group-demands  to  be  settled  by  group- 
action.  A  balance  of  internal  powers  would  functionally  be 
sought.  Arrangements  would  require  a  system  of  collective 
"contracts  upon  the  basis  of  collective  bargaining.  Law,  as 
now,  would  be  matter  for  the  courts.  The  judiciary  could  settle 
a  dispute  between  a  bootmakers'  gild  and  the  authorities  of 
an  orphan  asylum  in  Manchester  as  well  in  one  system  as 
another.  Probably,  indeed,  a  special  system  of  industrial 
courts  would  be  developed.  Probably,  also,  just  as  in  the 
United  States  a  court  of  special  and  pre-eminent  dignity  de- 
cides controversies  between  the  separate  states,  disputes  be- 
tween a  producers'  authority  and  a  consumers'  would  need  a 
special  tribunal.  That  is  why,  as  M.  Duguit  has  pointed 
out,"^  jurisprudence  will  occupy  an  important  place  in  the 
federalist  society  towards  which  we  are  moving.^^^ 

VIII.     THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  FREEDOM 

So  complex  a  division  of  powers  as  this  seems  at  first  sight  con- 
fusing to  one  accustomed  to  the  ordinary  theory  of  state-sov- 
ereignty. It  is  not  difficult  to  urge  that  co-ordination  implies 
the  possibihty  of  conflict  and  to  insist  that  only  by  an  hierachi- 
cal  structure  of  authority  can  the  danger  of  disturbance  be  mini- 
mised. Yet  it  is,  to  say  the  least,  tolerably  clear  that  disturb- 
ance is  not  avoided  by  the  conference  of  supreme  power  on  the 
state.  The  rejection  of  that  claim  to  sovereignty,  moreover, 
involves  an  attitude  to  politics  which  has  at  least  some  merit. 
There  is  a  sense  in  which  the  vastest  problem  by  which  we  are 
faced  is  the  very  scale  of  the  life  we  are  attempting  to  live.  Its 
bigness  tends  to  obscure  the  merits  of  real  freedom.  And,  indeed, 

"5  "Le  Droit  Social,  le  Droit  Individuel,"  p.  157. 

"*  On  the  whole  of  this   Cf.    Cole,    "Self -Government   in    Industry," 
Ch.  Ill,  and  Paul-Boncour,  "Le  Federalisme  Economiqiic,"  pp.  372-423. 


V^ 


90  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

there  is  industrially  abroad  a  certain  suspicion  of  liberty  against 
which  safeguards  must  be  erected.  The  individual  suffers 
absorption  by  the  immensity  of  the  forces  with  which  he  is  in 
contact.  That  is  true  not  less  of  the  House  of  Commons,  of 
Congress,  of  the  French  chamber,  than  it  is  of  an  industry  which 
has  largely  suffered  depersonalisation.  There  are  few  signs  of 
that  energy  of  the  soul  which  Aristotle  thought  the  secret  of 
happiness.  There  is  Uttle  work  that  offers  the  opportunity  of 
conscious  and  systematic  thought.  ResponsibiUty  tends  to 
coagulate  at  a  few  centres  of  social  life;  so  that  the  work  of 
most  is  the  simple  commission  of  orders  it  is  rarely  their  busi- 
ness to  reflect  upon.  We  are  clearly  tending  to  be  overawed  by 
our  institutions;  and  we  can  perceive,  in  a  way  different  from 
the_perspective  set  by  Lecky  and  Sir  Henry  Maine,  a  genuine 
danger  lest  we  lose  hold  of  that  chiefest  source  of  happiness. 
Clerks  and  teachers  and  tenders  of  machines,  for  each  of  whom 
there  is  prescribed  a  routine  that  fills  the  most  eager  hours  of 
life,  dare  not  be  asked  for  the  effort  upon  which  new  thought  is 
founded.  An  expert  in  the  science  of  factory  management  has 
even  assumed  that  for  the  purpose  of  productivity  a  man  "who 
more  nearly  resembles  in  his  mental  make-up  the  ox  than  any 
other  type"^^^  is  desirable.  Happiness  in  work,  which  can  alone 
be  fruitful  of  advance  in  thought,  is,  as  Mr.  Wallas  has  noted,^''^  a 
phrase  for  most  practically  without  meaning.  The  problem  to- 
day, as  the  problem  at  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution,  is 
the  restoration  of  man  to  his  place  at  the  centre  of  social  life. 

That  is,  indeed,  the  real  significance  of  freedom.  It  alone 
enables  the  individuality  of  men  to  become  manifest.  But 
individuality  is  bound  to  suffer  eclipse  if  power  is  unduly  cen- 
tred at  some  single  point  within  the  body  politic.  To  divide  it 
upon  the  basis  of  the  functions  it  is  to  perform  is  the  only  guar- 
anty for  the  preservation  of  freedom.  We  too  little  remember 
that  the  appearances  of  politics  have  obscured  the  emergence  in 
our  time  of  new  and  sinister  forces  of  compulsion.    The  pursuit 

"^  Taylor,  "Principles  of  Scientific  Management,"  p.  59.  Mr.  Hoxie  has 
noted  this  authoritarian  tendency  throughout  the  "efficiency"  school. 
"Scientific  Management  and  Labour"  passim. 

"«  "The  Great  Society,"  pp.  34.'),  363  ff.  A  very  thorough  collection  of 
data  upon  this  subject  would  be  invaluable. 


/ 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  91 

of  an  ideal  of  efficiency,  for  which,  in  part  at  least  the  New- 
World  is  responsible,  has  led  men  to  make  a  fetish  of  centralis- 
ation. They  have  not  seen  that  the  essence  of  free  government 
is  the  democratization  of  responsibility.  They  have  not  realised 
that  no  man  can  make  his  life  a  thing  worthy  of  himself  without 
the  possession  of  responsibility.  It  is  useless  to  respond  that 
men  are  uninterested  in  politics.  They  are  interested  in  any- 
thing which  nearly  touches  their  lives,  provided  only  that  they 
have  a  share  in  its  application. 

They  can  develop  that  control  only  by  preventing  the  con- 
centration of  power.  In  a  society  so  great  as  ours,  some  system 
of  representation  is  inevitable;  and  it  is  only  by  dividing  func- 
tions that  we  can  prevent  those  representatives  from  absorbing 
the  life-blood  of  the  body-politic ;  exactly  as  iu  France  decen- 
tralisation alone  can  cure  the  dangerous  overprominence  of 
Paris.  To  divide  industrial  power  from  political  control  is  to 
prevent  the  use  of  the  latteF Influence  against  the  forces  of 
change.  It  removes  the  main  lever  by  which  the  worker  is 
prevented  from  the  attainment  of  self-expression.  It  makes  the 
chief  well-spring  of  progress  not  the  chance  humanitarianism 
the  spectacle  of  an  under-paid  employment  may  create,  but  the 
earnest  and  continuous  effort  of  the  worker.  It  thereby  gives 
to  him  a  training  in  the  business  of  government  which  other- 
wise is  painfully  lacking.  For,  after  all,  the  one  sphere  in  which 
the  worker  is  genuinely  articulate  is  the  sphere  of  production. 
To  admit  the  trade-union  to  an  effective  place  in  government, 
to  insist  that  it  is  fundamental  in  the  direction  of  production, 
is  to  make  the  worker  count  in  the  world.  He  may  be  then  also 
a  tender  of  machines;  but  where  his  trade-union  is  making 
decisions  in  which  his  own  will  is  a  part  he  is  something  more 
than  a  tender  of  machines.  His  very  experience  on  this  side  of 
government  will  make  him  more  valuable  in  his  quality  as  citi- 
zen. He  will  see  the  consumptive  process  more  realistically 
because  its  details  have  been  illuminated  for  him  in  trade-union 
activity.  The  very  divisions  of  society  will  hinge  upon  the 
different  aspects  of  his  own  life.  It  is  upon  him  that  the  basis 
of  the  state  must  then  be  founded.  ; 

It  has  been  urged  that  no  society  could  endure  in  such  a  syn- 
thesis.    Unless,  so  we  are  told,  there  is  within  it  some  unique 


.92  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

centre  of  power,  a  conflict  of  authorities  may  well  prove  its  de- 
struction, A  state  cannot  live  unless  it  possess  the  absolute  and 
undivided  allegiance  of  its  members.  To  depict,  therefore,  a 
community  in  which  allegiance  is  co-operative  seems,  in  such 
perspective,  to  destroy  its  efficient  fife.  But  we  have  already 
in  fact  discussed  this  question.  We  have  already  shown  that 
no  man's  allegiance  is,  in  fact,  unique.  He  is  a  point  towards 
which  a  thousand  associations  converge;  what,  then,  we  ask 
is  that  where  conflict  comes,  we  have  assurance  that  he  follow 
the  path  of  his  instructed  conscience.  Once  grant  the  individual 
rights  against  the  state,  and  it  follows  that  the  state  must  win 
his  loyalty  by  the  splendor  of  its  effort.  What,  mainly,  is  needed 
is  some  source  of  guarantee  against  perversion  of  the  state-power. 
Partly,  that  is  needed  in  the  relation  of  churches  to  the  state; 
partly,  also,  and  today,  primarily,  it  is  needed  if  the  certainty  of 
industrial  progress  is  to  be  secured.  For  we  have  seen  that  the 
state-will  tends  inevitably  to  become  confused  with  that  of  gov- 
ernment. Government  is  in  the  hands,  for  the  most  part,  of 
those  who  wield  economic  power.  The  dangers  of  authority 
become  intensified  if  the  supreme  power  be  collected  and  con- 
centrated in  an  institution  which  cannot  be  relied  upon  uniquely 
to  fulfil  its  theoretic  purposes.  That  is  why  the  main  safeguard 
against  economic  oppression  is  to  prevent  the  state  from  throw- 
'  ing  the  balance  of  its  weight  into  the  side  of  established  order. 
It  is  to  prevent  it  from  crying  peace  where  in  fact  the  true  issue 
is  war.  For,  important  as  may  be  the  process  of  consumption, 
it  is  in  nowise  clear  that  the  state  treats  equally  those  who  are 
benefited  by  the  process.  It  is  by  no  means  certain  that  the 
standard  of  Hfe  of  the  worker  is  not  better  safeguarded  by  his 
trade-union  than  by  the  state. 

Yet  of  one  thing  we  must  beware.  It  is  not  difficult  to  pro- 
ject a  wanton  idealism  into  our  view  of  the  trade-unions.  It  is 
not  difficult,  when  they  are  contrasted  with  the  policy,  for  ex- 
ample, of  the  National  Manufacturers*  Association  of  the 
United  States,  to  regard  them  as  little  short  of  perfect.  We  have 
ceaselessly  to  remember  that  the  retention  of  economic  anti- 
quarianism  by  the  trade-unions  is  at  least  as  possible  as  its  reten- 
tions by  the  manufacturer.  The  attitude  of  the  Lancashire 
cotton-operatives  to  child  labour,  the  attitude  of  the  Pearl  but- 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  93 

ton  makers  to  apprenticeship,^"  are  instances  of  this  kind.  It 
is  at  least  possible  that  we  shall  have  more  and  more  to  evolve 
bills  of  rights  in  which  the  fundamental  nations  of  social  justice 
are  put  beyond  the  reach  of  peradventure.  The  Lancashire 
cotton-operatives,  indeed,  might  be  voted  down  in  a  gild-parlia- 
ment on  a  question  of  child-labour;  but  it  is  important  that 
they  should  be  a  priori  prevented  from  getting  into  the  frame  of 
mind  where  the  interest  of  the  citizen  in  education  can  be  sacri- 
ficed to  a  demand  for  cheap  labour. 

From  one  difficulty,  indeed,  we  may  at  the  outset  free  our 
minds.  "A  state,"  writes  Mr.  Zimmern,'^^  "in  which  the  ma- 
jority of  the  citizens,  or  even  a  substantial  minority,  doubted 
to  which  external  authority  their  supreme  allegiance  was  due 
would  soon  cease  to  be  a  state  at  all."  This,  surely,  evades  the 
point  at  issue.  A  state  in  which  a  "substantial  minority"  of 
the  citizens  did  not  feel,  in  a  crisis,  the  call  of  allegiance  would 
probably  be  embarking  upon  a  policy  at  least  open  to  the  grav- 
est doubt.  It  cannot  be  too  emphatically  insisted  that  the  real 
merit  of  democratic  government  as  opposed  to  any  other  form 
IS  exactly  this  dependence  upon  consent.  The  very  difficulty 
which  caused  the  breakdown  of  the  policy  of  international 
socialism  in  1914  was  its  failure  to  give  to  its  recognised  repre- 
sentatives in  the  belligerent  countries  the  authority  needed  to 
make  the  German  state  halt  before  its  policy  of  aggression. 
It  was  precisely  because  the  authority  of  the  German  state  is 
paramount  that  those  who  manipulate  its  destinies  can  without 
serious  question  pervert  it  from  the  path  of  right  conduct.  The 
safeguard  of  the  English  state  is  the  knowledge  that  there  is 
without  its  instruments  a  critical  opinion  capable  of  organised 
expression.  Nor  is  there  reason  to  fear  that  a  state  where  dis- 
sent may  organise  itself  is  less  capable  of  unified  defence  than 
an  autocratically-controlled  regime.  For  a  democratic  com- 
munity has  its  heart  in  the  business  that  it  undertakes.  It 
fights,  not  with  mechanical  obstinacy,  but  the  intensity  of  a 
conviction  derived  from  the  process  of  free  thought.  Its  vic- 
tory may  be  delayed;   but  unless  the  odds  are  overwhelmingly 

1"  Cf.  Webb,  "Industrial  Democracy,"  Ch.  X. 

1'"  Letter  to  The  New  Republic,  September  15,  1917. 


94  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

against  it,  the  spirit  it  can  infuse  into  its  purpose  is  bound,  in 
the  end,  to  give  it  victory.^^^ 

There  are  at  least  two  directions  in  which  the  danger  of 
over-concentrating  the  power  of  the  state  has  received  a  strik- 
ing emphasis  in  the  last  few  years.  The  necessities  of  war  have 
immensely  increased  the  area  of  state-control.  Social  needs 
broke  down  the  quasi-anarchy  of  a  competitive  industrial 
system,  and  its  place  has  been  taken  by  two  separate  forms  of 
management.  On  the  one  hand  we  have  the  continued  man- 
agement of  industry  by  private  enterprise,  with,  however,  a 
rigid  supervision  exerted  by  the  state.  The  danger  here  is 
obviously  immense.  The  need  of  the  state  in  war-time  has 
been  increasing  productivity  and  the  whole  orientation  of  con- 
trol has  been  towards  that  end.  So,  even  if  rules  have  been 
laid  down,  profits  taxed,  priority  of  supply  enforced,  still  the 
situation  has  in  reality  involved  a  state-guarantee  of  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  present  industrial  regime.  That  has  meant 
an  immense  increase  of  centralisation.  It  has  changed  at  a 
stroke  the  whole  and  elaborate  system  of  safeguards  by  which 
labour  had  sought  protection  against  the  dehumanising  forces 
of  capitalism. ^*°  It  does  not  seem  doubtful  that  this  change 
has  been  in  a  high  degree  beneficial.  But  it  has  had  two  grave 
results.  On  the  one  hand  there  is  the  problem  of  giving  to  the 
trade-unions  safeguards  that  shall,  in  the  new  synthesis,  be 
equal  to  the  power  of  the  old.  On  the  other  there  has  taken 
place  an  immense  concentration  of  capital  not  merely  in  in- 
dustry itself,  but  in  finance  also.  Nothing  will  be  easier  in  the 
years  that  lie  ahead  either  for  the  owners  of  capital  to  demand 
the  continuance  of  government  control,  or  to  insist  that  natur- 
alisation upon  the  basis  of  adequate  compensation  is  alone  a 
fair  return  for  its  services.  In  either  case  we  have  a  guarantee 
of  interest  made  a  fundamental  charge  upon  the  resources  of 
the  state.  That  burden,  without  a  time-Hmit,  may  well  prove 
a  fundamental  obstacle  to  the  democratisation  of  control. 

Nor  is  the  alternative  of  complete  state-management  more 
inviting.     Indeed,  it  may  without  exaggeration  be  suggested 

'"  As  is  forcibly  pointed  out  by  my  critic  in  the  London  Times  of  May 
17,  1917. 

'*"  Cf.  Webb,  "The  Restoration  of  Trade  Union  Conditions,"  passim. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN    STATE    v     05 

that  the  evils  such  a  regime  would  imply  are  hardly  less  great 
than  those  of  the  present  system.  For  to  surrender  to  govern- 
ment officials  not  merely  political  but  also  industrial  adminis- 
tration is  to  create  a  bureaucracy  more  powerful  than  the  world 
has  ever  seen.  It  is  to  apotheosise  the  potent  vices  of  a  govern- 
ment department.  It  is  to  make  certain  a  kind  of  paternalism 
which,  perhaps  above  all  other  systems,  would  prevent  the 
advent  of  the  kind  of  individual  freedom  we  desire.  After  all, 
we  have  had  no  light  experience  of  the  state.  Municipally  it 
certainly  is  no  less  efficient  than  private  industry ;  but,  humanly 
speaking,  there  is  little  or  no  evidence  that  its  administration 
is  more  democratic.  The  attitude  of  the  London  County 
Council  to  its  carmen  is  hardly  encouraging. ^^^  The  Holt 
Report  on  the  postal  service  must  give  pause  to  every  observer 
who  occupies  himself  with  the  consideration  of  these  prob- 
lems.^^2  The  long  story  of  grievances  in  the  French  civil  service 
is  a  record  that  no  believer  in  state-absorptiveness  can  con- 
template with  equanimity.^^^  The  permanent  official  is  no 
more  blessed  with  an  immediate  appreciation  of  that  hunger  to 
determine  the  rule  of  his  own  fife  which  is  the  source  of  demo- 
cratic aspiration  than  the  private  employer.  Nor  can  anyone 
examine  his  record  in  the  present  war  and  feel  confident  that 
he  has  any  real  contribution  to  offer.  On  the  contrary,  the  one 
complaint  of  which  we  on  all  hands  hear  is  lack  of  confidence 
in  him  from  those  whose  confidence  is  essential  to  the  right 
conduct  of  industry.^^*  The  centralisation  state-management 
would  imply  would  mean  the  transference  of  all  power  to  a 
class  of  guardians  within  the  state  whose  main  object,  even 
more  than  today  would,  at  all  costs,  be  the  maintenance  of 
regularity  of  supply.  There  would,  inevitably,  be  an  effort  to 
play  ofT  group  against  group,  to  purchase  office  by  favour,  to 

181  Cf.  Cole,  "Labour  in  Wartime,"  p.  160  ff. 

i*'^  So  far  as  France  is  concerned  cf .  Beaubois,  "La  Crise  Postale  et  les 
Monopoles  L'Etat,"  and  the  note  on  the  American  post-office  in  The 
New  Republic,  Vol.  XIII,  p.  167. 

183  Cf .  Chap.  V  below. 

18*  Cf.  the  Reports  of  Mr.  Lloyd-George's  "Commissions  on  Industrial 
Unrest"  (American  Bureau  of  Labour  edition),  pp.  77-8,  88-9,110-12,  25, 
119,  162,  217. 


96  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

lack  inventiveness,  by  which  in  every  age  a  bureaucracy  is  dis- 
tinguished. Then,  as  now,  the  trade-unions  would  be  com- 
pelled to  fight  against  an  established  order  for  the  opportunity 
of  industrial  self-expression;  and  the  fight  against  a  state  is 
notoriously  more  difficult  than  the  fight  against  private  capi- 
tal. Inevitably,  moreover,  the  public  character  of  the  state 
as  employer  lends  it  a  factitious  popular  support  against  which 
it  is  difficult  to  make  headway.  And,  indeed,  government,  even 
less  than  private  enterprise,  is  hardly  prepared  to  tolerate 
democratisation  of  control. 

Nor  is  it  prepared  to  tolerate  a  democratic  judgment.  We 
here  touch  a  vital  element  in  modern  government.  Our  state 
is  a  sovereign  state,  and  about  the  acts  of  its  agents  the  cloak 
of  its  supremacy  is  cast.  In  nothing,  indeed,  has  the  falsity 
of  such  an  outlook  been  more  strikingly  manifest  than  in  the 
doctrine  of  its  irresponsibility.  We  place  governmental  acts 
in  a  different  category  from  private  acts.  If  A  harms  B  the 
courts  always  lie  open  for  remedy;  but  if  A  be  government,  it 
is  with  problems  of  a  different  kind  that  we  become  immediately 
concerned. 

The  explanation  is  probably  simple.  To  sue  the  king  in  his 
own  courts  has  about  it  an  air  of  unreason;  for,  at  least  in 
theory,  he  is  present  there,  and  to  sue  him  is  to  ask  him  to  be 
judge  in  his  own  cause.  When  the  doctrine  of  his  legal  infalli- 
bility becomes  added  thereto  we  have  all  the  materials  for  an 
evasion  of  justice.  For,  to  the  courts,  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  the  English  state.  There  is  a  king,  and  the  state  can  shrink 
behind  the  personality  he  will  lend  for  its  protection.  It  does 
not  matter  that  since  the  eighteenth  century  he  has  been  no 
more  than  the  shadow  of  a  great  name.  The  old  form  is  pre- 
served, and  it  lends  its  content  to  the  government  by  which  he 
has  been  replaced.  An  action  for  breach  of  contract,  indeed, 
can,  by  the  disagreeable  formality  of  a  Petition  of  Right 
be  instituted;  but  into  the  category  of  tort  the  concept  of 
liability  has  not  yet  entered.  Miss  Bainbridge  may  be  run 
over  by  the  mail-van  of  the  Postmaster-General;  but  the  irre- 
sponsibility of  the  state  prevents  an  action  against  anyone  but 
the  humble  driver  of  the  van.^^^    The  Lords  of  Admiralty  may 

185  Bainbridge  v.  Postmaster-General  (1906),  I,  K.  B.  178. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE  97 

infringe  a  patent  but  they  remain  inaccessible  to  justice. ^^^ 
Sir  Claude  Macdonald  may  dismiss  an  official  whom  he  has,  as 
Her  Majesty's  Commissioner  for  the  Niger  Protectorate  en- 
gaged for  a  definite  period  of  years  before  its  expiration;  but 
the  ample  cloak  of  state  authority  is  cast  about  him.^^^  "The 
maxim  that  'the  king  can  do  no  wrong'/'  said  a  strong  court/^^ 
"applies  to  personal  as  well  as  political  wrongs,  and  not  only 
to  wrongs  done  personally  by  the  sovereign  (if  such  a  thing 
could  be  supposed  possible),  but  to  injuries  done  by  one  sub- 
ject to  another  by  authority  of  the  sovereign.  For  from  the 
maxim  that  the  king  can  do  no  wrong  it  follows,  as  a  necessary 
consequence,  that  the  king  cannot  allow  wrong  to  be  done; 
for  to  authorize  a  wrong  to  be  done  is  to  do  a  wrong;  and  as  the 
wrongful  act  done  becomes  in  law  the  act  of  those  who  author- 
ize it  to  be  done,  it  follows  that  the  petition  of  right  which 
complains  of  a  tortious  or  wrongful  act  done  by  the  Crown  or 
by  servants  of  the  Crown  discloses  no  right  to  redress,  for  as 
in  law  no  such  wrong  can  be  done  no  such  right  can  arise  .  .  .  ." 
So  when  the  Sultan  of  Johore  puts  off  his  sultanship  and  makes 
an  offer  of  marriage  to  Miss  Mighell  in  the  guise  of  an  Albert 
Baker,  his  sovereignty  prevents  recovery  of  damages  for  breach 
of  promise. ^^^  The  whole  thing  is  a  positive  stumbling  block 
in  the  path  of  administrative  moralisation. 

Nor  is  this  irresponsibility  confined  to  England.  Many  of 
the  local  jurisdictions  of  the  United  States  expressly  limit  them- 
selves from  being  sued  in  their  own  courts  even  though,  as  the 
Supreme  Court  has  said,^^°  "it  is  difficult  to  see  on  what  sohd 
foundation  of  principle  the  exemption  from  liability  to  suit 
rests."  In  France  it  is  only  painfully,  and  after  long  hesita- 
tion, that  a  category  of  state-responsibility  is  being  evolved."^ 
We  have  not  taken  to  heart  the  great  words  of  Maitland  that 
"it  is  a  wholesome  sight  to  see  the  'Crown'  sued  and  answer- 
is*  Feather  v.  Regina,  6  B  &  S,  257. 

1"  Dunn  V.  the  Queen  (1896),  I,  Q.  B.  C.  A.,  116. 

188  Feather  v.  Regina,  6,  B.  &  S.,  257. 

"9  Mighell  V.  Sultan  of  Johore  (1894),  I,  Q.  B.,  149. 

"»  U.  S.  V.  Lee,  106  U.  S.,  196,  206. 

"1  Cf.  Duguit,  "Transformations  du  Droit  Public,"  Ch.  VII. 


98  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

ing  for  its  torts. "^^^  It  is  true  that  an  increasing  tendency  is 
apparent  to  provide  statutory  remedy  for  wrongful  acts.^^^ 
Where  government  dissolves  into  a  dock  company  the  cloak 
of  sovereignty  may  well  suffer  withdrawal. ^^^  But  the  essen- 
tial thesis  that  a  state  act — which  in  practice  means  a  govern-- 
mental  act — gives  rise  to  no  liability  remains  untouched.  It. 
is  the  price  we  pay  for  refusing  to  look  facts  in  the  face.  The. 
state  in  this  context  is  a  group  of  officials  who  may  act  not  less 
harmfully  than  a  private  individual.  It  is  difficult  to  see  why 
their  acts  should  be  excused  where  harm  is  caused.  And  that 
the  more  in  an  age  that  has  witnessed  the  immense  growth  of 
administrative  law.^^^ 

Upon  its  dangers,  indeed,  too  much  insistence  can  hardly 
be  laid.  The  most  striking  change  in  the  political  organisation 
of  the  last  half-century  is  the  rapidity  with  which,  by  the  sheer 
pressure  of  events,  the  state  has  been  driven  to  assume  a  posi- 
tive character.  We  talk  less  and  less  in  the  restrained  terms 
of  Benthamite  individualism.  The  absence  of  governmental 
interference  has  ceased  to  seem  an  ultimate  ideal.  There  is 
everywhere  almost  anxiety  for  the  extension  of  governmental 
functions.  It  is  probably  inevitable  that  such  an  evolution 
should  involve  a  change  in  the  judicial  process.  The  admin- 
istrative departments,  in  the  conduct  of  public  business,  find 
it  essential  to  assume  duties  of  a  judicial  character.  Where, 
for  example,  great  problems  like  those  involved  in  government 
insurance  are  concerned,  there  is  undoubtedly  a  great  conven- 
ience in  leaving  their  interpretation  to  the  officials  who  are  to 
administer  the  act.  They  have  gained  in  its  application  an 
expert  character  to  which  no  purely  judicial  body  can  pretend; 
and  their  opinion  has  a  weight  which  no  community  can  afford 
to  neglect.  The  business  of  the  state,  in  fact,  is  so  much  like 
private  business  that,  as  Professor  Dicey  has  emphasised,^^^ 

"2  "Collected  Papers,"  III,  263. 

"^  Cf.  Mr.  Maguire's  very  able  paper  in  Harvard  Law  Review,  Vol.  30, 
pp.  20  ff.,  and  see  especially  Canadian  Revised  Statutes  (1906),  C.  140, 
Sec.  20,  for  an  interesting  example  of  legal  remedy  for  injury  by  negligence 
on  public  works. 

19"  Mersey  Docks  v.  Gibbs,  11,  11.  C.  L.  C,  686. 

"^  Cf.  E.  Barker  in  the  Political  Quarterhj  for  May,  1914,  esp.  pp.  125  f. 

^^^  Law  Quarterly  Review,  Vol.  31,  p.  150. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE  99 

its  officials  need  "that  freedom  of  action  necessarily  possessed 
by  every  private  person  in  the  management  of  his  own  per- 
sonal concerns."  So  much  is  at  least  tolerably  clear.  But 
history  suggests  that  the  relation  of  such  executive  justice  to 
the  slow  infiltration  of  a  bureaucratic  regime  is  perilously  close; 
and  the  development  of  such  administrative  law  needs  at  each 
step  to  be  closely  scrutinised  in  the  interests  of  public  liberty.^" 

The  famous  Arlidge  case  in  England^^^  is  a  striking  example 
of  what  the  seventeenth  century  would  have  termed  Star- 
chamber  methods.  It  was  there  decided  by  the  highest  Eng- 
lish tribunal  that  when  a  government  department  assumes 
quasi-judicial  functions  the  absence  of  express  enactment  in 
the  enabling  statute  means  that  the  department  is  free  to  em- 
bark upon  what  procedural  practice  may  seem  best  to  it;  nor 
wull  the  courts  enquire  if  such  practice  results,  or  can  by  its 
nature  result,  in  justice.  In  such  an  attitude  it  is  clear  that 
what  Professor  Dicey  has  taught  us  to  understand  as  the  rule 
of  law  ^^^  becomes  largely  obsolete.  If,  as  in  the  Zadig  case,^*"' 
the  Secretary  of  State  for  Home  Affairs  may  make  regulations 
of  any  kind  without  any  judicial  tests  of  fairness  or  reasonable- 
ness being  involved,  it  is  clear  that  a  fundamental  safeguard 
upon  English  hberties  has  disappeared.  Immediately  admin- 
istrative action  can  escape  the  review  of  the  Courts  it  is  clear 
that  the  position  of  a  public  official  has  become  privileged  in 
a  sense  from  which  the  administrative  law  of  France  and  Ger- 
many is  only  beginning  to  escape. 

Nor  is  it  likely  that  these  issues  have  become  significant 
merely  in  relation  to  abnormal  conditions.  American  administra- 
tive law,  in  the  sense  of  a  law  different  in  content  from  a  mere  law 
of  public  offices,  goes  back  to  the  Ju  Toy  case,2°^  where  a  ma- 
jority of  the  Supreme  Court,  perhaps  somewhat  doubtfully, 

"'  Cf.  Pound,  "Address  to  the  New  Hampshire  Bar  Association,"  June 
30,  1917. 

'^^  (1915)  A.  C.  120,  and  see  Dean  Pound's  comment  in  the  address 
cited  above. 

189  "The  Law  of  the  Constitution"  (8th  ed.),  p.  179  f. 

^0°  R.  V.  HalUday  (1917).  A.  C.  226.  Cf.  especially  the  dissenting  opinion 
of  Lord  Shaw  and  the  comment  in  31  Harvard  Law  Review,  296. 

201  U.  S.  V.  Ju  Toy,  198  U.  S.  253. 


J 


100        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

held  the  courts  powerless,  in  view  of  the  Chinese  exclusion  Act 
of  1894,  to  review  a  decision  of  the  Secretary  of  Commerce  and 
Labour.  But  no  one  would  object  to  action  by  a  government 
department  so  long  as  assurance  could  be  had  of  absolute  fair- 
ness in  the  methods  by  which  a  decision  was  reached;  it  was  ex- 
actly the  absence  of  that  fairness  which  constituted  the  source 
of  grievance  and  disquiet  in  the  Arlidge  case,  A  recent  decision 
of  the  Supreme  Court,^'^^  very  strikingly  comparable  with  the 
issue  in  the  English  case,  suggests  that  the  Supreme  Court  will 
be  careful  of  those  safeguards  as,  indeed,  the  due  process  clause 
obviously  demands  it  must  be  careful.  The  PubHc  Service 
Commission  of  New  York  ordered  a  gas  company,  after  a  hear- 
ing in  which  witnesses  were  cross-examined,  testimony  introduced 
and  the  case  argued,  to  provide  gas  service  for  a  certain  district. 
The  company  believed  that,  relative  to  the  expenditure  re- 
quired, a  sufficient  return  would  not  be  had.  It  therefore  ap- 
pealed on  the  ground  that  the  order  of  the  commission  "was 
illegal  and  void  in  that  it  deprived  the  Gas  Company  of  its  prop- 
erty without  due  process  of  law  and  denied  to  it  the  equal  pro- 
tection of  the  laws  in  violation  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment 
to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  ....  "and,  after 
the  requisite  intermediate  stages,  the  issue  came  before  the 
Supreme  Court  on  this  single  ground  of  error.  Mr.  Justice 
Clarke  upheld  the  action  of  the  PubUc  Service  Commission. 
Be  admitted,  for  the  Court,  that  the  finding  of  an  expert  com- 
mission is  final  and  will  not  be  discussed  again  by  the.  courts. 
Such,  of  course,  has  been  the  general  practice  of  the  Supreme 
Court ;2°3  and,  so  far,  the  decision  in  no  sense  differs  from  the 
bearing  of  the  opinion  rendered  in  the  Arlidge  case  by  the  House 
of  LorcTs^ 

But  there  is,  at  this  point,  a  significant  departure.  "This 
court,"  says  Clarke  J.^^^  "will  nevertheless  enter  upon  such  an 
examination  of  the  record  as  may  be  necessary  to  determine 
whether  the  federal  constitutional  right  claimed  has  been  denied"^ 
as,  in  this  case,  whether  there  was  such  a  want  of  hearing,  or 

202  New  York  v.  McCall  et  al,  38  Sup.  Ct.  Rep.  122. 

203  Baltimore  &  Ohio  R.R.  Co.  v.  Pitcairn  Coal  Co.,  215  U.  S.  481 ;  Inter- 
state Commerce  Commission  v.  Union  Pacific  R.R.  Co.,  222  U.  S.  541. 

2""  New  York  v.  McCall  et  al,  38  Sup.  Ct.  Rep.  122,  124. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         101 

such  arbitrary  or  capricious  action  on  the  part  of  the  Com- 
mission as  to  violate  the  due  process  clause  of  the  consti- 
tution.'M  No  one,  it  may  be  suggested,  who  studies  the  history 
of^flig'^e-process  clause  can  deny  that,  on  occasion,  it  has  been 
sadly  perverted  from  its  orginal  purposes.  But  here  at  least, 
and  in  the  perspective  here  outlined,  its  value  must  be  obvious 
even  to  those  who  are  suspicious  of  the  rigidity  of  a  written 
constitution.  The  Supreme  Court,  as  the  learned  judge  points 
out,  does  not  purpose  to  go  into  issues  probably  better  settled 
by  the  administrative  tribunal;  but  it  does,  and  rightly,  purpose 
to  examine  into  the  fundamental  question  of  whether  the  means 
taken  by  that  tribunal  to  attain  its  end  were  such  as  were,  on 
the  plain  face  of  things,  adequate  to  the  securing  of  justice. 
That,  of  a  certainty,  is  a  safeguard  to  which  the  courts  will 
more  and  more  be  driven  with  the  expansion  of  administrative 
law.  Under  the  Defence  of  the  Realm  Considation  Act,  for  in- 
stance, the  Home  Secretary  may  issue  a  regulation  which  pro- 
hibits publication  of  any  book  or  pamphlet  relating  to  the  con- 
duct of  the  war  on  the  terms  of  peace  without  its  previous  sub- 
mission to  the  censor  who  may  prohibit  such  publication  with- 
out the  assignment  of^"^  cause.  That  is  to  say  that  the  merest 
and  irresponsible  caprice  of  a  junior  clerk  of  determined 
nature  might  be  actually  the  occasion  of  suppressing  a  vital 
contribution  to  the  understanding  of  the  war.  So  ridiculous 
a  proceeding  is  at  least  prevented  by  the  system  of  the  Supreme 
Court.  In  the  first  place,  and  above  all,  a  due  publicity  is  se- 
cured. It  would  have  to  be  shown  to  the  Supreme  Court  that 
the  methods  taken  to  secure  the  decision  were  such  as  to  war- 
rant it ;  and  in  so  vital  a  thing  as  freedom  of  speech  one  may  feel 
tolerably  certain  that  the  methods  would  be  subject  to  closest 
scrutiny.  It  has  been  the  habit  of  past  years  to  sneer  rather 
elaborately  at  Bills  of  Rights.^"^  It  may  yet  be  suggested  that 
with  the  great  increase  of  state  activity  that  is  clearly  fore- 
shadowed there  was  never  a  time  when  they  were  so  greatly 
needed.    Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  human  needs  the  satisfaction 

^"^  Regulation  51.    Cf.  London  Nation,  December  8,  1917. 

^"^  A  habit  unfortunately  intensified  by  Professor  Ritchie's  "Natural 
Rights,"  which,  dismissing  them  historically,  was  held  to  dismiss  them 
politically  also. 


102        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

of  which  history  has  demonstrated  to  be  essential  must  be  put 
beyond  the  control  of  any  organ  of  the  state;  that,  and  no  more 
than  that,  is  what  we  mean  today  by  natural  rights. ^''^  Govern- 
mental power  is  a  thing  which  needs  at  every  stage  the  most 
careful  regard;  and  it  is  only  by  judicial  control  in  terms  of 
those  rights  that  the  path  of  administration  will  become  also 
the  path  of  justice  .  The  problem  of  responsibility  can  be  ap- 
proached with  profit  from  another  angle.  The  purpose  and 
.  the  character  of  government  as  a  trust  leads  us  to  regard  it  as 
in  reality  an  institution  for  translating  purposes  into  the  event 
without  regard  to  the  fact  that  the  naen  who  operate  those  pur- 
poses give  to  them  a  personahty  of  their  own.  The  belief  in 
the  reality  of  corporate  persons,  indeed,  only  slowly  makes  its 
way  into  the  general  body  of  Anglo-American  law.  Its  progress 
is  at  every  stage  impeded  by  the  general  refusal  of  the  courts 
to  recognize  the  corporate  character  of  the  trust.  It  is  nearly 
thirteen  years  since  Maitland  demonstrated  with  all  his  pro- 
found scholarship,  and  even  more  than  his  wonted  charm,  that 
the  trust  has,  above  all  things,  served  historically  as  a  screen 
to  promote  the  growth  of  institutions  which,  for  a  variety  of 
reasons,  have  found  inadvisable  the  path  of  corporate  adven- 
^m-Q  208  Especially  true  of  the  state,  this  may  perhaps  receive 
its  simplest  illustration  in  the  case  of  charitable  trusts.  "A 
trust,"  said  Bacon  there  centuries  ago,209  "is  the  binding  of  the 
conscience  of  one  to  the  purpose  of  another" — a  fit  enough  des- 
cription of  the  process  of  government.  But  we  have  failed  to 
see  how  that  purpose  must  take  account  of  the  categories  of 
time  and  space.  In  its  legal  perspective,  the  doctrine  is  most 
largely  a  supposed  deference  to  the  rights  of  propriety;  and  it 
has  paid  but  little  attention  to  the  admirable  remark  of  John 
Stuart  MilP^*'  that  no  man  ought  to  exercise  the  rights  of  prop- 
erty long  after  his  death. 

This  tendency  to  regard  as  adequate  and  all-excusing  the 
purpose  enshrined  in  the  trust  without  at  the  same  time  em- 

2"  W.  Wallace,  "Lectures  &  Essays,"  213  ff. 
zos  "Collected  Papers,"  III,  321  f . 
2"9  "Reading  on  the  Statute  of  Uses,"  p.  9. 

^'o  Essay  on  "Corporations  and  Church  Property"  in  Vol.  T  of  liis  "Dis- 
sertations and  Discussions." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         103 

phasising  the  life  that  trust  engenders  has  received  an  interest- 
ing illustration  in  a  recent  American  decision. ^^^  A  fireman 
who  was  engaged  in  extinguishing  a  hospital  fire  was  injured 
through  the  defective  condition  of  the  hospital  fire  escape. 
He  sued  the  hospital  for  damages,  and  relief  was  denied  on  the 
ground  that  the  doctrine  of  respondeat  superior  does  not  apply 
to  charitable  institutions.  The  basis  of  the  decision  seems  to 
be  the  opinion^^^  ^^^t  the  funds  of  a  charity  are  not  provided 
to  liquidate  the  damages  caused  in  its  defective  administration; 
and  the  funds  are  therefore  not  applicable  to  the  redemption 
of  the  torts  committed  by  the  agents  or  servants  of  the  char- 
ity.2^'  This  doctrine,  indeed,  is  not  worked  out  with  entire 
consistency  in  other  parts  of  the  law,  since  a  charitable  insti- 
tution, like  the  state,  is  liable  in  an  action  for  breach  of  contract. 
Nor  is  it  an  universal  doctrine,  since  it  is  not  applied  by  the 
English  courts.^^^  It  in  reality  involves  a  whole  series  of  as- 
sumptions. It  starts  out  from  the  belief  that  a  charitable 
institution  is  in  a  different  position  from  other  institutions  in 
the  fact  that  its  purpose  is  not  one  of  profit.  But  this  is  en- 
tirely to  ignore  the  administrative  aspect  of  the  problem.  To 
fulfil  the  purpose  of  a  charity  involves  all  the  usual  features 
of  an  ordinary  corporate  enterprise.  It  acts  by  agents  and 
servants.  It  harms  and  benefits  third  parties  exactly  as  they 
are  harmed  or  benefited  by  other  institutions.  Where  fault 
is  involved  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  the  exception  should  be 
maintained.  It  is  small  comfort  to  an  injured  fireman  to  know 
that  even  if  he  has  to  compensate  himself  for  his  injuries,  he  is 
maintaining  the  strict  purpose  of  the  founder  of  the  charity. 

211  Loeffler  v.  Trustees  of  Sheppard  and  Enoch  Pratt  Hospital  (1917) 
100  Abl.  301. 

212  The  result  of  the  case  could  be  justified  on  the  ground  that  there  is 
no  liability  for  an  injury  sustained  by  a  licensee  when  the  injury  is  brought 
about  by  a  condition  of  the  premises. 

2i»  Overholser  v.  National  Home  for  Disabled  Soldiers,  68  Ohio  St.  236; 
McDonald  v.  Mass.  General  Hospital,  120  Mass.  432;  Jensen  v.  Maine 
Eye  and  Ear  Infirmary,  107  Me.  408;  Downes  v.  Harper  Hospital,  101 
Mich.  555. 

21^  Duncan  v.  Findlater  (1839)  6  CI.  &  Fin.  894  was  decided  in  American 
fashion,  but  since  Mersey  Docks  Trustees  v.  Gibbs,  (1866)  I  H.  L.  93  the 
rule  has  happily  been  the  other  way. 


104  AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE 

To  him  the  case  appears  simply  one  of  injury  and  he  suffers 
not  less,  but,  in  the  present  state  of  the  law,  actually  more, 
from  the  sheerly  fortuitous  fact  that  his  accident  has  occured 
not  at  a  faetory  but  at  a  hospital.  The  thing  of  which  the  law 
ought  to  take  account  is  surely  the  balance  of  interests  in- 
volved; and  the  hospital  is  far  more  likely  to  look  to  the  con- 
dition of  its  ladders  if  it  pays  the  penalty  of  its  negligence  than 
if  it  saves  a  certain  percentage  of  its  income. 

It  would,  in  fact,  be  an  intolerable  situation  if  the  only  pro- 
tection afforded  the  pubHc  against  the  torts  of  charities  were 
that  of  the  pockets  of  agents  and  servants.^^^  Those  who 
founded  the  charity  intended  it  to  be  operated;  and  they,  or 
their  representatives  must,  logically  enough,  pay  the  cost  of 
its  operation  from  the  funds  provided  for  that  purpose.  There 
are,  indeed,  some  signs  that  the  courts  are  beginning  to  appre- 
ciate this.  Relief  has  been  granted  to  a  claimant  against  the 
Salvation  Army  which  negligently  allowed  one  of  its  vans  to 
run  wild.2^^  The  inadequate  protection  of  dangerous  machin- 
ery has  suffered  its  due  and  necessary  penalty.^^^  The  injury 
which  resulted  from  the  employment  of  an  unskilful  nurse  has 
not  gone  unrequited. ^^^ 

Not,  indeed,  that  any  of  these  decisions  really  touch  the 
central  issue  that  is  raised.  We  have,  in  fact,  a  twofold  prob- 
lem. We  have,  in  the  first  place,  to  inquire  whether^he  crea- 
tion of  a  charitable  trust  does  not  involve  the  creation  of  a 
corporate  person  exactly  in  the  manner  of  a  business  enter- 
prise; in  the  second  place  the  question  is  raised  as  to  whether 
there  is  any  ground  for  the  exclusion  of  a  charity  from  the 
ordinary  rules  of  vicarious  liability.  The  answer  to  the  first 
question  is  clearly  an  affirmative  one.  The  Salvation  Army, 
an  orphan  asylum,  a  great  hospital,  are  just  as  much  persons 
to  those  who  have  dealings  with  them  as  a  private  individual 
or  a  railway  company.  Differentiation,  if  it  is  to  be  made, 
cannot  be  made  on  the  ground  of  character.  If  it  is,  the  courts 
will  go  as  fatally  wrong  in  the  results  of  litigation  as  did  the 

215  Cf .  Yale  Law  Journal  Vol.  20,  P.  124  ff. 

"«  Hordem  v.  Salvation  Army,  199  N.  Y.  233. 

2'7  McMerney  v.  St.  Luke's  Hospital,  122  Minn.  10. 

2'8  St.  Paul's  Sanitarium  v.  Williamson,  164  S.  W.  36. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        105 

House  of  Lords  in  the  great  Free  Church  of  Scotland  case.^^^ 
It  was  the  insistence  of  the  Lords  upon  the  nature  of  the  church 
as  a  pendant  to  a  set  of  doctrines  which  made  them  fail  to  see 
that  more  important  was  the  life  those  doctrines  called  into 
being.220  The  life  of  the  Salvation  Army  is,  in  precisely  similar 
fashion,  more  important  than  the  doctrines  that  it  teaches; 
and  we  must  legally  judge  its  life  by  what  in  fact  it  is,  and  not 
by  the  theories  it  proclaims. 

Herein  is  found  the  answer  to  our  second  inquiry.  The  only 
reason  why  a  charity  should  not  be  Uable  for  fault  is  its  public 
character.  But  that,  surely,  is  no  adequate  reason  at  all.  It 
is  probably  a  simple  analogy  from  the  irresponsibility  of  that 
greatest  of  modern  charities  the  state.  It  is  the  merest  justice 
that  if  the  public  seeks  benefit,  if  men  seek  to  benefit  the  pub- 
lic, due  care  should  be  taken  not  to  harm  those  interests,  not 
directly  pubUc,  which  are  met  in  the  process.  A  charity's 
personaHty  will  suffer  no  less  detriment  if  it  is  allowed  to  be 
irresponsible  than  a  private  enterprise.  A  hospital,  for  instance, 
ought  to  be  forced  to  take  as  much  care  in  the  selection  of  its 
nurses  as  a  banker  in  the  choice  of  his  cashiers.  We  have  found 
that  the  enforcement  of  liability  is  the  only  adequate  means  to 
this  latter  end,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  why  the  same  is  not 
true  of  every  other  sphere.  French  law  has  not  hesitated  to 
hold  a  county  asylum  liable  for  the  arson  of  an  escaped  lunatic; 
and  we  may  thence  be  sure  that  the  prefect  of  the  department 
concerned  is  not  a  second  time  guilty  of  negligence.^^i  fhe 
whole  problem  is  another  illustration  of  the  vital  need  of  in- 
sisting as  much  on  the  processes  of  institutions  as  on  their 
purposes.  A  negligently  administered  charity  may  aim  at 
inducting  us  all  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but  it  is  socially  es- 
sential to  make  it  adequately  careful  of  the  means  employed.222 
The  argument,  surely,  is  applicable  to  the  state;  for  upon 
"9  See  the  report  of  Mr.  (now  Lord)  Haldane's  speech  in  the  special 
report  by  Orr  and  the  comment  of  Dr.  Figgis,  "Churches  in  the  Modern 
State,"  19  ff. 

220  Cf.  Canadian  Law  Times,  Vol.  36,  p.  140  S. 

221  Sirey,  190S,  III,  98  with  a  note  by  M.  Hauriou 

222  This  and  the  preceding  paragraphs  are  practically  reproductions  of 
some  notes  of  mine  in  the  Harvard  Law  Review  for  January  and  February, 
1918j  and  I  am  indebted  to  its  editors  for  leave  to  make  use  of  them. 


106        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

a  vaster  theatre  it  is  yet  similar  functions  that  its  agents  per- 
form. For  what,  after  all,  is  here  contended  is  the  not  unrea- 
sonable thesis  that  service  in  governmental  functions  does  not 
make  men  cease  to  be  human.  Public  enterprise  is  not  less 
liable  to  error  than  private;  and  its  responsibility  should  on 
that  account  be  not  the  less  strictly  enforced.  Nor  do  we 
perhaps  sufficiently  realise  the  possible  ramifications  of  an 
exclusion  of  the  state  from  due  responsibility.  It  begins  as  a 
legal  exclusion;  but,  sooner  or  later,  that  legal  category  will 
pass  over  into  the  moral  sphere.  The  fact  of  achievement  will 
become  more  important  than  the  method  by  which  attainment 
is  reached.  Once  an  end  is  set  up  as  in  itself  great  enough  to 
set  its  exponents  beyond  the  reach  of  law  the  real  safeguards 
of  liberty  are  overthrown.  Irresponsibility  becomes  equated 
with  the  dangerous  explanation  of  public  policy;  and  that, 
as  is  historically  clear,  is  the  first  step  towards  an  acceptance 
of  raison  d  'etat.  The  forms  of  protection  the-  law  has  slowly 
evolved  may  be  inadequate  as  the  realisation  of  ideal  morality; 
but  they  are  none  the  less  forms  of  protection.  They  repre- 
sent rules  of  conduct  which  have  behind  them  the  sanction  of 
social  experience;  and  in  that  sense  it  is  in  a  high  degree  dan- 
gerous to  exclude  any  category  of  men  from  subjection  to 
them.  For  the  release  of  the  state  from  the  trammels  of  law 
means  in  practice  the  release  of  its  officials  from  the  obliga- 
tions to  which  other  men  are  usefully  subject.  Sooner  or  later 
that  release  operates  as  an  excuse  for  despotism.  It  breeds 
the  worst  evils  of  bureaucracy.  It  makes  those  so  released 
impatient  of  criticism  and  resentful  of  inquiry.  It  is  fatal  to 
the  real  essence  of  democratic  government  which  involves  the 
conversion  of  the  mass  of  men  to  the  realisation  that  some 
special  programme  is  coincident  with  right.  It  neglects,  as 
Dr.  Figgis  has  so  well  said,^-^  "that  care  for  the  gradual  edu- 
cation of  character,  which  is  more  important  than  any  given 
measures,  is  always  so  easy  to  ignore  or  thrust  aside  in  the  en- 
thusiasm of  a  great  cause,  and  is  yet  at  the  basis  of  all  true 
liberty,  whether  religious  or  civil." 

For  the  assumption  of  an  unique  concern  in  government  for 
ideal  good  is  as  easy  as  it  is  certainly  fatal.     Nothing  is  more 

223  "irroin  Gerson  to  Grotius,"  p.  95. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        107 

simple  in  the  heat  and  stress  of  political  life  than  to  assume  the 
equation  of  one's  desire  with  what  ought  to  be  the  ultimate 
object  of  state-endeavour;  yet  nothing  is  at  the  same  time 
more  certain  than  that  the  equation  is  a  false  one.  We  need 
not  accept  Lord  Acton's  dictum  that  great  statesmen  have  been 
almost  always  bad  men  to  admit  that  the  conference  of  un- 
limited authority  is  at  every  point  attended  with  danger.  The 
real  guarantee  of  freedom  is  publicity;  and  publicity,  to  be 
adequate,  involves  subjection  to  the  control  of  general  rules 
of  right  and  wrong.  That  is  why  the  action  of  the  state  cannot 
be  put  upon  a  different  footing  from  individual  action.  The 
controlling  factors  of  good  conduct  are  thereby  loosed.  Men 
who  in  the  ordinary  processes  of  everyday  life  are  gentle  and 
tender  and  kindly,  become  in  their  corporate  aspect  different 
beings.  But  the  inference  therefrom  is  not  that  we  should 
judge  that  aspect  differently;  rather  does  it  involve  the  in- 
ference that  it  is  our  business  the  more  sternly  to  apply  what 
standards  time  has  painfully  evolved. 

Herein,  also,  we  may  discover  another  reason  for  the  division 
of  power.  The  only  way  in  which  men  can  become  accustomed 
to  the  meaning  and  content  of  political  processes  is  by  acquain- 
tance with  them.  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  has  noted-^^  the  dis- 
appearance with  the  advent  of  machinery  of  the  "essentially 
political  trades,"  like  tailoring  and  shoemaking,  where  pro- 
duction went  on  under  conditions  that  made  possible  the 
organisation  of  thought.  The  modern  factory  has  destroyed — 
for  good  or  ill — that  possibility;  and  that  distinction  clearly 
must  transfer  the  centre  of  social  importance  outside  the  fac- 
tory in  each  man's  daily  life.  But  that,  in  turn  involves 
making  the  groups  to  which  he  belongs  politically  real  in  the 
only  sense  of  the  word  that  today  has  meaning.  His  groups, 
that  is  to  say,  must  become  responsible  groups;  yet  responsi- 
bility can  only  come  where  some  social  function  is  definitely 
entrusted  to  the  group  for  fulfilment.  It  is  in  the  performance 
of  such  tasks  that  the  personality  of  men  obtains  its  realisa- 
tion. It  is  in  such  tasks  that  their  leisure  can  be  made  in  a  full 
sense  rich  and  creative.  That  is  not  the  case  today.  Everyone 
who  has  engaged  in  public  work  is  sooner  or  later  driven  to 

»2<  "The  Great  Society,"  p.  299. 


108        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

admit  that  the  great  barrier  to  which  he  finds  himself  opposed 
is  indifference.  To  the  comfortable  classes  he  is  liable  to  seem 
an  "agitator";  to  the  mass  of  toiling  men  he  commits  the  last 
sin  of  interference.  Here,  perhaps,  there  is  a  sense  in  which 
Rousseau's  paradox  becomes  pregnant  with  new  meaning  and 
it  may  in  the  end  be  true  that  men  must  be  forced  to  be  free. 
Certain  at  least  it  is  that  the  temptations  to  leave  alone  the 
real  problems  by  which  we  are  confronted  is  almost  insuperable. 
We  make  every  provision  to  maintain  the  status  quo.  Nothing 
is  more  simple  in  the  great  society  than  to  be  lost  amongst  one's 
neighbours;  nothing  is  more  dangerous  to  the  attainment  of 
the  social  end.  For  if  the  good  life  is  one  day  to  be  achieved 
by  the  majority  of  men  and  women  it  is  only  by  the  preserva- 
tion of  individuality  that  it  can  be  done;  and  individuality, 
in  any  generous  perspective,  does  not  mean  the  rich  and  in- 
tense life  of  a  few  able  men. 

That  is  why,  at  every  stage  in  the  social  process,  we  are 
concerned  to  throw  the  business  of  judgment  upon  the  indi- 
vidual mind.  That  does  not,  it  ought  to  be  insisted,  mean 
inefficient  government.  It  does  not  mean  that  we  shall  not 
trust  the  expert;  but  it  does  mean  the  clear  conviction  that  a 
judgment  upon  the  expert  is  to  be  a  democratic  judgment.  We 
have  had  too  much  experience  of  the  gospel  of  efficiency  to  place 
any  reliance  that  is  final  upon  what  promise  it  may  contain. 
The  great  danger  to  which  it  is  ceaselessly  exposed  is  the  eager 
desire  of  achievement  and  a  resultant  carelessness  about  the 
methods  of  its  programme.  It  sacrifices  independence  to  the 
machine  much  in  the  way  that  party  discipline  aiming,  above 
all,  at  victory  at  the  polls,  sacrifices  conviction,  with  its  possi- 
bility of  discoveries,  to  uniformity  of  outlook.  It  becomes  at 
once  impatient  of  the  exceptional  man  who  cannot  be  reduced 
within  its  categories;  but,  sooner  or  later,  it  becomes  im- 
patient also  of  the  average  man.  For  it  cannot  respect,  over 
any  length  of  time,  the  slowness  with  which  his  mind  moves, 
the  curiously  intricate  avenues  along  which  he  travels.  It  may 
be  true  that  in  any  group  of  men  oligarchical  government  is 
bound,  in  the  end,  and  in  some  degree,  to  develop  ;^2^    or,  at 

^26  This  is  the  thesis  of  Professor  Michel's  well-known  book  on  political 
parties;    but  I  feel  that  he  has  only  discussed  half  the  problem. 


AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE        109 


least,  we  need  not  deny  the  patent  virtues  of  a  man  who  can 
guide  his  fellows.  But  that  is  not  to  say  that  the  leaders  are 
shepherds  whom  the  flock  is  inthinkingly  to  follow.  It  means 
that  safeguards  must  be  erected  lest  the  mass  of  men  become 
mere  units  in  a  sheepfold.  It  means  the  insistence  that  liberty 
consists  above  all  in  the  full  opportunity  for  active  citizenship 
wherever  there  are  men  with  the  will  to  think  upon  political 
problems.  It  means  that  a  democratic  society  must  reject  the 
sovereign  state  as  by  definition  inconsistent  with  democracy. 

IX.    THE  DIRECTION  OF  EVENTS 

Such,  at  least,  seems  the  direction  in  which  the  modern  state 
is  moving.  We  stand  on  the  threshold  of  one  of  those  critical 
periods  in  the  history  of  mankind  when  the  most  fundamental 
notions  present  themselves  for  analysis.  In  England,  in  France, 
and  in  America,  it  is  already  possible  vaguely  to  discern  the 
character  of  that  dissatisfaction  from  which  a  new  synthesis 
is  ultimately  born.  The  period  when  a  sovereign  state  was  a 
necessary  article  of  faith  seems,  on  the  whole,  to  be  passing 
away.  Society  is  freed  from  the  control  of  any  special  religious 
organisation;  and  the  birth  of  scientific  theology  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  seems  destined  to  complete  that  process  of 
disintegration  which  began  with  the  advent  of  Luther.  It  is 
in  social  and  not  in  religious  theory,  that  is  to  say,  that  we  shall 
search  for  the  sources  of  new  insight.  The  moral  dogmas  we 
sGall  adopt  seem  likely  to  remain  unconnected  with  any  special 
church  or  school  of  religious  doctrine.  It  was  primarily  to' 
prevent  such  danger  that  the  sovereign  state  came  into  being. 
With  the  general  acceptance  of  Darwinism  the  success  of  its 
mission  seems  achieved.  For  the  g,tate  itself,  not  less  than  the 
church  is  subject  to  the  laws  of  evolution.  It  survives  in  any 
given  form  only  so  long  as  that  form  with  adequacy  summarises 
a  general  social  experience.  It  has  here  been  urged  that  it 
is  no  longer  adequate.  The  form  of  organisation  it  involves  is 
neither  politically  useful  nor  morally  sufficient.  The  time  has 
come  for  new  discoveries. 

No  one  who  has  observed  the  course  of  English  politics 
since  the  triumph  of  socialised  liberalism  in  1906  can  have  any 


110        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

doubts  upon  this  head.  It  was  an  epoch  which  began  with 
immense  promise;  and,  at  its  close,  it  seemed  hkely  to  end  in 
something  but  Uttle  short  of  disaster.  It  began  with  a  gigantic 
effort  to  make  the  categories  of  state-Hfe  more  socially  inclu- 
sive than  at  any  previous  period.  It  ended  in  a  drift  towards 
bureaucratic  control  from  which  thinkers  of  the  most  diverse 
schools  drew  back  in  distressed  scepticism.  The  state  had  al- 
ready begun  to  overload  its  instruments  with  business.  The 
exigencies  of  governmenl  had  so  strengthened  party-control  as 
virtually  to  destroy  the  independence  of  the  private  member; 
or,  at  least,  to  leave  him  a  pitiful  Friday  afternoon  in  which  to 
spread  his  curtailed  wings.  No  one  could  doubt  that  the  state 
would  long  retain  its  positive  character  without  some  system 
of  decentrahsation  being  devised.  For  the  pressure  on  Whit- 
hall  had  involved  the  growth  of  a  new  bureaucracy  which  gave 
rise  to  a  doubt  whether  the  regime  it  involved  was  compatible 
with  individual  freedom.^^^  Parliamentary  democracy  had 
broken  down;  sovereignty  had  patently  suffered  transference 
from  the  House  of  Commons.  With  both  women  and  trade- 
unionists  ahke  sources  of  new  loyalty  other  than  the  state 
could  be  detected;  and  in  Ulster  there  was  a  striking  deter- 
mination to  deny  the  finality  of  a  government  decision.  Moral 
and  economic  dissatisfactions  were  on  all  hands  evident.  It 
was  to  the  foundations  of  the  state  that  men  were  going  back. 
They  looked  upon  their  handiwork  and  did  not  pronounce  it 
good.  The  great  demand  of  the  time  was  for  religious  and  so- 
cial innovation;  and  the  benevolent  feudalism  of  the  Insurance 
Act  proved,  in  the  event,  in  no  sense  due  response  to  the  new 
desires  that  sought  expression.  Labour  was  declaring  that  the 
state  was  essentially  a  middle-class  institution — a  difference 
indeed  from  the  optimistic  days  when  Macaulay  could  claim 
that  the  middle  classes  were  "the  natural  representatives  of 
the  human  race."  The  state-regulation  of  Germany  seemed 
less  and  less  applicable  to  the  sturdy  individualism  of  the 
English  mind.  The  one  great  object  of  enquiry  was  from  what 
sources  new  discoveries  in  government  were  to  be  had.     We 

"*  Cf.  Prof.  Ramsay  Muir's  "Peers  and  Bureaucrats,"  and  the  inter- 
esting but  grossly  exaggerated  volume  of  E.  S.  P.  Haynes:  "The  Decline 
of  Liberty  in  England." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE         111 

had  evolved  the  great  society,  as  Mr.  Wallas  has  pointed  out,^" 
without  planning  institutions  at  all  adequate  to  its  scale  of  life. 

That  some  real  progress  lay  concealed  beneath  the  appear- 
ance of  this  chaos  it  would  be  difficult  to  deny.  Yet  what 
emerges,  in  a  perspective  that  the  events  of  the  last  four  years 
seem  now  to  have  made  final,  is  essentially  a  baQkruptcy  in 
liberal  ideas.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  make  a  claim  of  greater 
profit  for  Conservatism.  It  was  doubtless  overburdened  by 
the  weight  it  had  to  carry  in  the  support  of  an  obsolete  second 
chamber;  but  on  every  essential  political  problem  it  had  noth- 
ing acceptable  to  contribute.  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  indeed,  had 
realised  that  laissez-faire  was  not  without  its  merits;  but  its 
scope  was  limited  by  him  to  fields  too  narrow  and  specialised 
in  character  to  be  attractive  to  the  mass  of  men.  'The  state, 
in  fact,  had  come  to  the  parting  of  the  ways;  but  to  none  of 
its  fundamental  difficulties  could  it  offer  any  comprehensive 
solution.  Ireland,  the  second  chamber,  education,  poverty, 
agriculture,  the  position  of  women — about  all  of  these  there 
was  a  plethora  of  debate;  but  about  all  of  them  the  policy  of 
statesmen  was  to  prevent  a  half-response  in  the  hope  that, 
despite  them,  a  new  equihbrium  would  emerge.  And,  behind 
all  and  beyond  all,  there  loomed  the  gigantic  problem  of  a 
labouring  class  growing  ever  more  self-conscious  and  ever  more 
determined  to  control  its  own  destinies.  It  repudiated  the 
solution  of  social  welfare  implied  in  such  a  measure  as  the  In- 
surance Act.  Its  strikes  revealed  a  more  fierce  hostility  to  the 
forces  of  capital  than  had  been  manifest  since  the  early  years 
of  the  Holy  Alliance.  In  the  famous  Dubhn  Transport  Work- 
ers' strike  it  showed  a  solidarity  unique  in  labour  history.  The 
Labour  Party  seemed  to  it  hardly  more  instinct  with  hope 
than  the  traditional  political  forces  of  the  country.  It  was  in 
workshop  and  factory  that  the  new  ideas  were  being  forged. 
They  showed  a  striking  renaissance  of  that  attitude  which,  as 
in  Owen  and  Thompson  and  Hodgskin,228  believed  that  the  di- 
version of  labour  power  into  political  rather  than  into  economic 

^  "The  Great  Society,"  Chap.  I.  In  a  paper  pubHshed  in  the  Smith 
College  studies  on  the  "Problem  of  Administrative  Areas,"  I  have  tried  to 
note  the  significance  of  this. 

228  Qf _  Prof.  Fox^\^eirs  classic  introduction  to  Menger's  "Right  to  the 
Whole  Produce  of  Labour." 


112        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

fields  was  mistaken.  Its  influence  was  securing  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  social  history .22^  It  was  insisting  upon  the  need  of  new 
and  wider  educational  ideals.  It  was  demanding  a  complete 
revision  of  the  distribution  of  wealth.  It  was  thinking  out  new 
categories  in  the  productive  process.  It  rejected  state-arbi- 
tration of  its  difficulties  with  capital.  It  looked  with  grave 
suspicion  on  the  use  of  the  army  in  the  maintenance  of  social 
order.  It  emphatically  underlined  such  differentiation  of  treat- 
ment as  that  meted  out  to  Sir  Edward  Carson,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  to  that  significant  portent  Mr.  Larkin,  on  the  other.  It 
was,  of  course,  like  all  renaissances,  the  work  of  a  minority. 
But  it  was  a  minority  that  had  caught  the  vision  of  a  life  that 
might  be  made  more  splendid  and  more  spiritual  than  the  old. 
It  had  realised  that  the  basis  of  its  ideal  must  be  the  conquest 
of  economic  power.    It  was  upon  that  mission  it  had  embarked. 

^  Professor  Dicey,  whose  interpretation  is  the  more  valuable 
from  his  hostility  to  these  ideas,  has  suggested  that  the  two 
outstanding  characteristics  of  the  time  are  irreverence  for  law 
and  a  new  belief  in  natural  rights.  The  reason  of  this  surely 
lies  in  the  general  truth  that  parliamentary  government  had 
reached  the  zenith  of  its  achievement.  The  complexity  of  social 
problems  had  made  them  too  vast  for  discussion  by  debate  in 
the  House  of  Commons  to  be  a  sufficient  test  of  legislation.  No 
single  legislative  assembly  in  the  world  had  stood  the  test  of 
the  nineteenth  century  well  enough  to  make  men  hopeful. 
Everywhere  the  tendency  had  been  more  and  more  towards 
the  development  of  an  invisible  bureaucracy,  until  the  state 
itself  had  seemed,  in  the  last  analysis,  no  more  than  what  the 
French,  in  an  intranslatable  phrase,  call  a  syndicat  des  fondion- 
naires — a  syndicat,  moreover,  which,  as  John  Stuart  Mill 
saw,'^^"  is  largely  controlled  by  men  without  understanding  of 
working  class  ideals.  And  in  this  context  it  is  of  the  first  im- 
portance to  realise  that  the  movement  for  social  reform  was 
less  perhaps  a  genuine  effort  towards  the  reconstruction  that 
,-had  become  essential  than  towards  a  discovery  of  the  minimum 

'I  conditions  of  change  necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  the 
present  society. 

—  ^^'  As  in  Mr.  Tawney's  "Agrarian  Revolution  in  the  Sixteenth  Century," 
and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hammond's  studies  of  town  and  village  labour. 

^°  "Representative Government,  "Ch.III  (Everyman's edition), p.209-10. 


^f^- 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         113 

But  the  fact  has  been  that  the  theoretic  purpose  of  the  state 
did  not  find  adequate  fulfilment  either  in  governments  or  legis- 
latures. We  were  simply  forced  to  the  realisation  that  majority- 
rule  could  not  be  the  last  word  on  our  problems.  So  long  as 
political  power  was  divorced  from  economic  power  the  jury  of 
the  nation  was  in  reality  packed.  Wherein  representative  gov- 
ernment had  been  supremely  successful  was  in  the  securing 
of  general  political  rights  in  which  rich  and  poor  alike  have 
been  interested.  But  once  the  transference  has  been  made 
from  political  rights  to  economic  interests  the  basic  sectionaUsra 
of  society  has  been  apparent  to  anyone  with  the  patience  to 
observe  the  facts.  Wherever  economic  freedom  is  to  be  se- 
cured, certainly  legislative  experience  does  not  give  us  the  right 
to  expect  it  from  that  quarter.  Men  and  women  resented  a 
state  of  which  the  law  neither  expressed  nor  fully  attempted 
to  express  the  need  for  translating  their  desires  into  effective 
political  terms.  They  resented  and  resisted  it;  that  is  the  real 
root  of  lawlessness.  The  Osborne  decision  of  the  House  of 
Lords,^*^  for  example,  destroyed  at  a  stroke  the  confidence  of 
labour  in  that  judicial  tribunal.  Everyone  knew  that  the  polit- 
ical activity  of  the  trade-unions  was  an  integral  part  of  their 
functions;  everyone  knew  also  that  manufacturers'  associa- 
tions did  virtually  the  same  thing  in  virtually  the  same  way. 
Yet  the  House  of  Lords  tried  politically  to  strangle  the  unions 
within  the  four  corners  of  an  outworn  doctrine.  The  under- 
standing of  obvious  trade-union  implications  was  at  every 
point  absent  from  its  enquiry.  But  if  the  highest  tribunal  of  ^ 
the  state  can  so  misinterpret  the  challenge  of  its  age,  lawless- 
ness and  the  revival  of  natural  rights  are  not  difficult  to  under- 
stand. They  are,  historically,  the  perennial  symptoms  of 
discontent.  They  make  their  appearance  at  every  transitional 
epoch.    They  are  the  invariable  heralds  of  a  new  time. 

England  shows  her  temper  only  in  vague  hints  and  chaotic 
practical  demands;  the  more  logical  structure  of  the  French 
mind  makes  possible  a  sharper  contrast  between  opposing  at- 
titudes. The  one  certain  thing  in  the  France  that  came  into 
being  with  the  close  of  the  Dreyfus  controversy  was  a  revolt 
against  the  centralised  state.^^^    That  revolt  was  evident  in  at 

231  (1910)  A.  C.  87. 

232  This  is  worked  out  in  detail  in  Chapter  V  below. 


114        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

least  three  general  aspects.  The  contempt  for  politics  was  in 
France  more  widely  spread  than  in  any  other  European  coun- 
try. Distrust  of  the  chamber,  suspicion  of  statesmen,  a  doubt 
if  the  struggle  was  more  than  the  exchange  of  one  faction  for 
another,  are  everywhere  presented  to  us.  There  is  no  more 
creative  literature  in  the  last  generation  than  that  in  which 
men  like  Duguit,  Leroy  and  Paul-Boncour  have  depicted  for 
us  the  fall  of  the  sovereign  state  through  parliamentary  in- 
competence. Nor  does  the  trade-union  movement  emphasise 
any  dissimilar  lesson.  It  lacks  the  sober  and  practical  caution 
of  English  labour.  It  is  frankly  idealist  and,  on  the  whole,  as 
frankly  revolutionary.  Those  who  have  most  clearly  outlined 
its  aims,  men  like  Pelloutier  and  Griff uellies,  those  who  have 
analysed  its  rules  and  customs  like  Leroy  ,^^3  point  always  to 
the  capture  of  economic  power  by  the  proletariat  and  the 
emergence  of  a  new  society  created  in  federalist  terms.  Even 
more  striking  is  the  revolt  of  the  civil  service.  Here  the  state 
is  attacked  at  the  very  root  of  its  sovereignty;  and  where  the 
bureaucracy  joins  hands  with  the  worker  the  path  lies  open 
for  a  new  synthesis.  Proudhon  has  displaced  Marx  as  the 
guiding  genius  of  French  labour;  and  it  is  above  all  his  feder- 
aUsm  that  is  the  source  of  the  new  inspiration.^^* 

Even  those  who  reject  this  attitude  are  largely  sceptical  of 
the  future  of  the  older  ideals.  Some  have  frankly  taken  refuge 
in  a  royalist  and  aristocratic  solution  ;2^^  some,  like  M.  Brune- 
tiere,  have  urged  that  only  a  religious  revival  can  restore  France 
to  a  satisfactory  condition.  The  coalition  of  the  Left  dissolved 
when  the  separation  of  church  and  state  had  been  effected; 
and  it  cannot  be  said  that  M.  Jaures'  presence  in  the  Chamber 
concealed  his  frank  sympathy  with  a  proletarian  revolution. 
M.  Esmein  stood  out  as  the  soUtary  political  thinker  of  dis- 
tinction in  France  who  had  not  renounced  the  ancient  ways. 
The  strikes  before  which  the  state  was  largely  powerless;  the 
endless  proposals  for  decentralisation  and  proportional  repre- 

*'' His  "La  Coutumc  Ouvriere"  is  one  of  the  fundamental  books  of 
our  time. 

2^''  For  the  revival  of  interest  in  Proudhon  Cf.  Pirou  in  the  "Revue  d'His- 
toire  des  Doctrines  Sociales  et  Economiques,"  1912,  p.  161,  and  the  books 
there  cited. 

2«  Cf.  Chapter  II  below. 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE        US 

sentation;  the  growing  tendency  of  the  Council  of  State  to 
deny  in  practice  the  theory  of  national  sovereignty  promul- 
gated by  the  Revolution;  the  attempt  of  sociologists  like 
Durkheim  to  penetrate  through  the  artificial  classification  of 
rights  by  the  state  to  rights  derived  from  a  sohdarity  based 
on  group-needs  and  group-services  j^'*^  all  these,  surely,  herald, 
as  in  England,  the  transition  to  a  new  equilibrium.  France, 
like  England,  has  had  her  period  of  lawlessness  and  a  revival 
of  natural  rights.  But  she  has  wisely  rejected  the  over-simple 
formulae  of  Rousseau  as  an  attempted  analysis  of  social  rela- 
tionships. Rather,  as  in  1789,  she  is  setting  Europe  the  example 
of  a  new  perspective  in  political  organisation.  The  discipline, 
of  technical  co-ordination,  with  the  liberty  it  implies,  is  re-  ' 
placing  the  authoritarian  hierarchy  of  the  Napoleonic  state. ^'^ 
Nor  is  this  the  idle  hypothesis  of  theorists.  On  the  contrary 
it  represents  the  sober  analysis  of  everyday  life  drawn  from 
men  peroccupied  with  the  practice  of  law  and  industry.  That 
is  the  real  basis  of  its  promise  and  importance. 

Generalisations  about  America  are  notoriously  dangerous; 
for  it  is  tempting  to  deny  that,  in  the  European  sense,  there  is 
yet  any  such  thing  in  America  as  the  state.  Rather  is  the  ob- 
server confronted  by  a  series  of  systems  of  economic  interests 
so  varied  in  character  and,  at  times,  so  baffling,  as  to  make 
inquiry  almost  impossible.^^s  It  is  only  within  the  last  genera- 
tion that  America  has  emerged  from  the  uncritical  individual- 
ism of  a  pioneer  civilisation.  It  is  little  more  than  a  decade 
since  she  began  directly  to  influence  the  course  of  world-poli- 
tics. Yet  even  in  a  civilisation  so  new  and  rich  in  promise  it 
is  difficult  not  to  feel  that  a  critical  era  is  approaching.  The 
old  party-divisions  have  become  largely  meaningless.  The 
attempt  to  project  a  new  political  synthesis  athwart  the  old 
formulae  failed  to  command  support  enough  to  be  successful. 
Yet,  even  in  America,  that  point  of  economic  organisation  has 
been  reached  where  the  emergence  o!^  a  proletariat  presents  the 

^^See  especially  the  second  edition  of  his  "Division  du  travail  Social." 
It  badly  needs  translation  into  English. 

^'  Cf.  Leroy,  "Les  Transformation  de  la  Puissance  Publique,"  p.  286. 

238  Mr,  Herbert  Croly's  "Progressive  Democracy"  is  by  far  the  best  recent 
analysis. 


116        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

basic  social  problems.  A  political  democracy  confronts  the 
most  powerful  economic  autocracy  the  world  has  ever  seen.  The 
separation  of  powers  has  broken  down.  The  relation  between 
executive  and  legislature  cries  to  heaven  for  readjustment. 
The  decline  of  Congress  has  become  a  commonplace.  The  con- 
stituent states  of  the  republic  have  largely  lost  their  ancient 
meaning.  New  administrative  areas  are  being  evolved.  A 
patent  unrest  everywhere  demands  enquiry.  Labour  is  becom- 
ing organised  and  demanding  recognition.  The  men  who,  like 
Mark  Hanna  and  Mr.  Root,  could  stand  on  a  platform  of  sim- 
ple conservatism  are  already  obsolete.  The  political  literature 
of  America  in  the  last  fifteen  years  is  almost  entirely  a  literature 
of  protest.  Political  experimentation,  particularly  in  the  West, 
is  almost  feverishly  pursued.  Discontent  with  old  ideas  was 
never  more  bitter.  The  economic  background  of  the  decisions 
of  the  Supreme  Court  was  never  more  critically  examined; 
and,  indeed,  anyone  who  analyses  the  change  from  the  narrow 
individuaHsm  of  Brewer  and  Peckham  to  the  liberalising  scep- 
ticism of  Mr.  Justice  Holmes  and  the  passionate  rejection  of 
the  present  order  which  underlies  the  attitude  of  Mr.  Justice 
Brandeis,  can  hardly  doubt  the  advent  of  a  new  time. 

What,  in  a  sense,  is  being  born  is  a  realisation  of  the  state; 
but  it  is  a  realisation  that  is  fundamentally  different  from  any- 
thing that  Europe  has  thus  far  known.  For  it  starts  out  from 
an  unqualified  acceptance  of  political  democracy  and  the  basic 
European  struggle  of  the  last  hundred  years  is  thus  omitted. 
So  that  it  is  bound  to  make  a  difference  to  the  United  States 
that  its  critical  epoch  should  have  arrived  when  Europe  also 
confronts  a  new  development.  American  economic  history 
will  doubtless  repeat  on  a  vaster  scale  the  labour  tragedies  of 
the  old  world  and  think  out  new  expedients  for  their  intensi- 
fication. But  there  are  certain  elements  in  the  American  prob- 
lem which  at  once  complicate  and  sim^olify  the  issue.  Granted 
its  corrupt  politics,  the  withdrawal  of  much  of  its  ability  from 
goverrmiental  life,  its  exuberant  optimism,  and  a  traditional 
faith  in  the  efficacy  of  its  orthodox  political  mechanisms  that 
may  well  prove  disastrous,  there  are  yet  two  aspects  in  which 
the  basis  of  its  life  provides  opportunities  instinct  with  profound 
and  hopeful  significance.    It  can  never  be  forgotten  that  America 


V 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE         117 

was  born  in  revolution.  In  the  midst  of  its  gravest  material- 
ism that  origin  has  preserved  an  idealist  faith.  It  has  made  the 
thought  of  equality  of  opportunity  and  the  belief  in  natural 
rights  conceptions  that  in  all  their  vagueness  are  yet  living 
entities  no  man  may  dare  to  neglect.  When  the  dissatisfaction 
with  economic  organisation  becomes,  as  it  is  rapidly  becoming, 
acute  enough  to  take  pohtical  form,  it  is  upon  these  elements 
that  it  will  fasten.  Americans,  in  the  last  analysis,  believe  in 
democratic  government  with  a  fierce  intensity  that  cannot  be 
denied.  They  may  often  deceive  themselves  about  its  forms. 
They  may  often,  and  very  obviously,  suffer  an  almost  ludicrous 
perversion  of  its  expression.  The  effort  of  their  workers  may 
be  baffled  by  the  countless  nationalities  which  have  yet  to 
complete  the  process  of  Americanisation.  Their  trade-unions 
may  be  as  yet  for  the  most  part  in  a  commercial  stage.  Yet, 
from  the  confused  chaos  of  it  all,  one  clear  thread  may  be 
seized. 

It  is  towards  a  new  orientation  of  ideals  that  America  is  mov- 
ing Exactly  as  in  England  and  France  challenge  has  been 
issued  to  theories  of  organisation  that  have  outlived  their  use- 
fulness. That  was  the  real  meaning  of  the  Progressive  Move- 
ment. It  symbolised  a  dissatisfaction  with  the  attitude  that 
interpreted  happiness  in  terms  of  the  volume  of  trade.  The 
things  upon  which  interest  become  concentrated  are  the  fund- 
amental elements.  It  is  the  perversion  of  political  power  to 
economic  ends  that  above  all  receives  analysis.  The  economists 
demand  a  re-valuation  of  motives.^^^  "  Why  should  the  masses," 
asks  an  able  recent  inquirer,24o  "seemingly  endowed  with  the 
power  to  determine  the  future,  have  permitted  the  development 
of  a  system  which  has  stripped  them  of  ownership,  initiative 
and  power?"  and  his  answer  is  virtually  a  sober  indictment 
of  capitahsm.  "The  fundamental  division  of  powers  in  the 
United  States,"  says  President  Hadley,^^!  "is  between  voters 

239  This  is  the  work  that  has  been  performed  by  Mr.  Veblen  with  some- 
thinglike genius  in  his  "Theory  of  the  Leisure  Class;"  the  "Instinct  of  Work- 
manship;" the  "Theory  of  Business  Enterprise;"  and  the  great  book  on 
"Imperial  Germany  and  the  Industrial  Revolution." 

^*°  W.  H.  Hamilton,  the  Price-System  and  Social  Policy.  Journal  of 
Political  Economy,  Vol.  XXVI,  p.  31. 

^*'  Quoted  in  Hamilton,  op.  cit.  p.  37. 


118        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

on  the  one  hand  and  the  owners  of  property  on  the  other.  The 
forces  of  democracy  on  the  one  side  ....  are  set  over 
against  the  forces  of  property  on  the  other  side.  .  .  .  Demo- 
cracy was  complete  as  far  as  it  went,  but  constitutionally  it  was 
bound  to  stop  short  at  social  democracy."  It  is  against  this 
condition  that  the  liberal  forces  of  American  life  are  slowly 
aligning  themselves.  A  law  that  is  subservient  to  the  inter- 
ests of  the  status  quo  is  overwhelmingly  unpopular;  the  use  of 
the  injunction  in  labour  disputes,  for  example,  has  actually 
been  a  presidential  issue.^^^  Tj^e  Clayton  Act,  with  all  its 
defects,  is  yet  a  wedge  that  organised  labour  can  one  day  use 
to  good  purpose.2^^  Things  like  Mr.  Justice  Holmes'  dissent 
in  Coppage  v.  Kansas^^  deposit  a  solid  sentiment  of  determination 
that  will  not  easily  pass  away.  The  lawlessness  that  is  com- 
plained of  in  American  labour  is  essentially  the  insistance  that 
the  life  of  the  workers  has  outgrown  the  categories  in  which 
traditional  authority  would  have  confined  it.  The  basis  of  a 
new  claim  of  rights  is  in  America  autocthonous.  Nor  is  it  poss- 
ible to  doubt  that  only  concessions  large  enough  to  amount  to 
the  admission  of  its  substance  can  prevent  it  from  being  made. 
In  either  case,  we  have  the  materials  for  a  vast  change  in  the 
historic  outlines  of  American  federalism. 

It  is  thus  upon  the  fact  that  ours  is  an  age  of  vital  transition 
that  the  evidence  seems  clearly  to  concentrate.  The  two  char- 
acteristic notes  of  change  are  present  in  the  dissatisfaction  with 
the  working  of  law,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  reassertion  of  nat- 
ural rights  uponHie  other.  The  vahdity  of  the  acts  of  the  legal 
sovereign  everywhere  suffers  denial  unless  its  judgement  secures 
a  widespread  approval ;  or,  as  with  the  South  Wales  Mines  in 
England  and  the  Railroad  Brotherhoods  in  the  United  States, 
an  organised  attempt  may  successfully  be  made  to  coerce  the 
action  of  government  in  a  particular  direction.  Violence,  as 
with  the  militant  suffragists  in  England  may  well  come  to  be 
regarded  as  a  normal  weapon  of  political  controversy ;  nor  have 

2«  Cf .  Groat,  "The  Attitude  of  American  Courts  in  Labour  Cases," 
passim. 

^*^  Its  defect  is  that  it  still  leaves  American  trade  unions  at  the  mercy 
of  the  common  law  doctrine,  Cf.  conspiracy.  The  act  is,  U.  S.  Statutes, 
1913-4,  C.  321. 

2"  236  U.  S.  1,  26. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         119 

those  who  suffered  imprisonment  for  their  acts  regarded  the 
penalty  as  other  than  a  privilege.  In  such  an  aspect,  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  state,  in  the  only  sense  in  which  that  sovereignty 
can  be  regarded  as  a  working  hypothesis,  no  longer  commands 
anything  more  than  a  partial  and  spasmodic  acceptance.  For 
it  is  clearly  understood  that  it  in  practice  means  governmental 
sovereignty;  and  the  need  for  the  limitation  of  governmental 
powers  is  perceived  by  men  of  every  shade  of  opinion.  Nor  is 
the  reassertion  of  rights  less  significant.  It  involves  in  its  very 
conception  a  limitation  upon  the  sovereignty  of  the  state.  It 
insists  that  there  are  certain  things  the  state  must  secure  and 
maintain  for  all  its  members,  and  a  state  that  can  not  secure 
such  rights  as  are  deemed  needful  by  a  minority  as  important, 
for  example,  as  organised  labour,  will  sooner  or  later  suffer  a 
change  in  form  and  substance.  The  basis  of  law  in  opinion  is 
more  clear  than  at  any  previous  time;  and  the  way  in  which  that 
opinion  is  fostered  outside  the  categories  of  the  normal  political 
life  until  its  weight  is  great  enough  to  make  heedless  resistance 
impossible  is  a  fact  of  which  every  observer  must  take  account. 

X.  CONCLUSION 

It  is  difficult  to  see  how  such  potentialities  at  any  point  har- 
monise with  the  traditional  theory  of  the  state.  The  lawyer  ,may 
still  manipulate  that  theory  for  the  purposes  of  judicial  enquiry; 
but,  beyond  that  narrow  usefulness,  its  day  seems  to  have  de- 
parted. W©-feare-beeft-ter«gh%-4b»^4he  state  is  sovereign;  yet 
it  is  in  practice  obvious  that  its  will  is  operated  only  by  a  portion 
of  its  members  and  that  to  this  portion  the  possession  of  sover- 
eignty is  denied.  It  is  urged  that  the  state  aims  at  the  good  life; 
and^  agaih'In  practice,  it  is  clear  that  the  re^hsation  of  its  pur- 
pose is  so  inadequate  as  to  render  at  best  dubious  the  value 
of  such  hypotheses.  It  is  insisted  that  the  state  can  be  bound 
only  by  its  own  consent;  yet,  in  practice  also,  and  unless  we 
wish  merely  to  play  upon  words,  it  is  clear  that  throughout  its 
recent  history  groups  other  than  itself  have  compelled  its  adop- 
tion of  a  policy  to  which  it  was  opposed.  The  books  tell  us  that 
it  is  irresponsible;  yet,  in  practice  also,  what  mainly  confronts 
us,  especially  in  France,  is  the  growth  of  a  state-responsibility 
which,  however  reluctantly  conceded,  is  still  responsibility.    We 


120_     AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

are  told  that  sovereignty  is  indivisible;  yet,  unless  again  we  wish^ 
merely  to  play  upon  words,  the  fact  of  its  broad  partition  is  on 
every  hand  obvious.  Nor  is  the  notion  of  the  state  as' funda- 
mentally representative  of  society  in  liny  sort  more  acceptable. 
/  It  is  true  where  it  fufills  the  broad  objects  of  a  social  life  that 
is  now  conceived  in  ethical  terms;  but,  more  and  more,  men  are 
coming  to  doubt  whether  the  result  of  the  state  process  is,  in- 
variably or  even  normally,  the  achievement  of  what  such  an 
ethical  perspective  must  demand.  It  is  rather  towards  another 
attitude  that  men  are  turning.  It  is  rather  of  other  categories 
they  are  beginning  to  make  use.  For  the  orthodox  theory  of 
the  state  has  proved  largely  without  basis  in  the  event.  It  may 
be  true  as  a  dream;  and  it  is  doubtless  undeniable  that  dreams 
are  often  enough  capable  of  realisation.  But  it  is  for  those  who 
cherish  the  dream  to  give  proof  of  its  relation  to  the  facts. 

The -basis,  upon  which  we  proceed  is  the  simple  tiuth  that 
men  and  institutions  are  possessed  of  power.  It  is  clearly  per- 
ceived that,  in  itself,  power  is  neither  good  nor  bad;  its  use 
alone  affords  material  for  judgment  upon  its  ethical  confeTItr^ 
It  is  held  that  its  concentration  at  any  special  point  within 
society  increases  the  possibility  of  its  perversion  to  dubious 
purpose.  That  has  involved  the  increasing  insistence  that  our 
general  notions  of  right  and  wrong  be  put  beyond  the  reach  of 
danger.  The  state,  in  a  word,  is  to  be  subject  to  law;  and  that- 
is  no  more  impossible  in  a  political  democracy  than  when,  for 
state,  Bracton  could  use  the  name  of  King.  The  interdepend- 
ence of  political  and  economic  structure  is,  moreover,  not  less 
potent  than  in  the  past;  and  it  is  thus  sheer  anachronism  to 
regard  as  adequate  an  industrial  order  in  which  power  is  not 
in  democratic  fashion  distributed. 

The  individual,  that  is  to  say,  is  to  become  increasingly  the 
centre  of  social  importance.  Otherwise,  in  so  vast  a  world, 
his  claims  may  well  suffer  neglect.  After__all_it_ita§_fpr  his 
happiness  that  the  state,  at  least  in  philosophic  interpretation, 
existed  from  its  origins;  for  if  the  good  life  does  not  bring, 
happiness  to  humbl'e  men  and  women  it  is  without  meaning. 
So  that  it  is  upon  the  happiness  he  is  able  to  attain  that  our 
judgment  of  its  processes  must  be  founded.  It  is  in  this  con- 
text obvious  that  such  judgment  could  not  in  our  time  be  an 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE       J.21 

optimistic  one.     The  merely  material  conditions  of  happiness 
are  today  achieved  for  too  few  of  us  to  give  any  right  to  satis- 
faction.   Freedom,  in  the  sense  that  it  has  been  here  maintained,  ^ 
is  alone  real,  is  a  good  attained  only  by  a  small  part  of  society. 
Nor  have  we  evidence  that  such  limitation  is  inherent  in  the 
nature  of  things.     On  the  conk-ary,  the  evidence  we  possess 
points  so  emphatically  in  the  opposite  direction  as  to  justify 
the  assumption  of  its  inadequacy.     Yet,  without  that  general 
freedom,  the  state  is  a  meaningless  thing.    _The  problem_of   .      . 
authority  becomes^. -abjaxfcjall^  the  duty  so  to  organise  its  char-    ^^^ 
acter  and  its  processes  as  to  make  it,  in  the  widest  aspect,  the 
sentaJiL-bf  right  and  of.  freedom — But  to -make  it  the_  servant 
oT  freedom  is  already  to  hmit  its  powers. 

The  emphasis  upon  freedom  is  made  because  it  is  believed 
that  only  in  such  fashion  can  the  ethical  significance  of  per- 
sonahty  obtain  its  due  recognition.  (£pr  the  harmony  we  need  ^  / 
between  rulers  and  subjects  it  is  not  upon  outward  law  but  ■ 
inward  spirit  that  reUance  must  be  placedj  The  social  order 
of  the  present  time  tends  more  and  more  to  destroy  the  per- 
sonal will  of  each  member  of  the  state  by  asking  from  him  a 
passive  acquiescence  in  its  policy  on  the  ground  of  generous 
purpose.  It  is  here  argued  that  such  uniformity  is  the  negation 
of  freedom.  It  is  neither  active  nor  vital.  It  in  reality  denies 
perhaps  the  ability  and  certainly  the  justice  of  the  mind  that 
tries  to  fathom  the  motives  of  government.  It  is  thus  the 
death  of  spontaneity;  and  to  destroy  spontaneity  is  to  prevent 
the  advent  of  liberalism.  We  have  thus  to  deny  that  right  and 
wjoag.  are  state-created_dogEagis  which  shift  with  the  interest 
of  those  who  control  the  state.  We  do  not,  hke  Lord  Acton, 
postulate  an  unchanging  content  of  goodness;  for  the  very 
essence  of  this  theory  is  the  acceptance  of  the  fact  of  evolu- 
tion. But  it  is  denied  that  right  is  what  is  subjectively  so 
deemed  by  government.  A  certain  objectivity,  to  be  estab- 
lished by  argument  and  experience,  is  made  inherent  in  it. 
The  one  thing  in  which  we  can  have  confidence  as  a  means  of 
progress  is  the  logic  of  reason.  We  jhus  iiisist,  on  the  contrary, 
that  the  mindj)f  each  man,  in  aU  the  aspects  conferred  upon 
him  by  his  character  as  a  social  and  a  solitary  being,  pass 
judgment    upon    the    state;    and   we.,aSk   for    his   condem- 


122        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

nation  of  its  policy  where  he  feels  it  in  conflict  with  the  right. 

That,  surely,  is  the  only  environment  in  which  the  plant  of 
liberty  can  flourish.  It  implies,  from  the  very  nature  of  things, 
insistence  that  the  allegiance  of  man  to  the  state  is  secondajy 
to  his  allegiance  to  what  he  may  conceive  his  duty  to  society 
as  a  whole.  It  is,  as  a  secondary  allegiance,  competing  in  the 
sense  that  the  need  for  safeguards  demands  the  erection  of  al- 
ternative loyalties  which  may,  in  any  given  synthesis,  oppose  _ 
their  wills  to  that  of  the  state.  In  the  ordinary  acceptance  of 
the  term,  such  an  attitude  denies  the  validity  of  any  sovereign  n 
power  save  that  of  right;  and  it  urges  that  the  discovery  of 
right  is,  on  all  fundamental  questions,  a  search,  upon  which 
the  separate  members  of  the  state  must  individually  engage. 
We  ask,  in  fact,  from  each  the  best  thought  he  can  offer  to  the 
interpretation  of  life.  For  we  have  proceeded  far  enough  in 
its  understanding  to  realise  its  complexity.  We  know  that  no 
solution  can  be  permanent  or  adequate  that  is  not  in  each 
detail  based  upon  the  widest  possible  experience.  But  we  know 
also  that  such  experience  must  be  free  and  capable  of  influence 
if  it  is  to  receive  its  due  respect.  The  slavery  of  inertia  is  a 
weed  that  grows  everywhere  in  wanton  luxuriance;  and  we 
are,  above  all,  concerned  to  make  provision  against  its  intrusion. 

In  the_ex.ternal  relationships  of  the  state  it  is  clear  that  the 
Machiavellian  epoch  is  drawing  to  a  close.  The  application^ 
of  ethical  standards  to  the  foreign  policy  of  nations  is  a  demand 
tHat  has  secured  the  acceptance  of  all  who  are  concerned  for 
the  future  of  civilisation.  Yet  it  is  assuredly  not  less  clear  that 
the  internal  life  of  the  state  requires  a  similar  moralisation. 
We  realise  now  the  danger  of  a  state  that  makes  power  the 
supreme  good  and  is  careless  of  the  purpose  for  which  it  is 
exerted.  We  have  sacrificed  the  youth  of  half  the  world  to 
maintain  our  liberty  against  its  encroachments.  Surely  the 
freedom  we  win  must  remain  unmeaning  unless  it  is  made 
consistently  effective  in  every  sphere  of  social  Ufe.  This  gen- 
eration, at  least,  can  never  forget  the  ghostly  legions  by  which 
it  is  encompassed.  It  ought  also  ceaselessly  to  remember  that 
it  is  by  those  legions  its  effort  will  be  judged.  The^  will  meas- 
ure our  achievement  in  terms  of  their  supreme  devotion.  They 
will  accept  no  recompense  save  the  conquest  of  their  dreams. 


CHAPTER  TWO 

BONALD» 

I.    THE  IMPLICATION  OF  THEOCRACY 

THE  theocratic  system  seems  to  have  found  an  eutha- 
nasia the  more  tragic  in  that  it  proceeds  unobserved. 
It  shares  therein  the  fate  of  half  a  hundred  pohtical 
systems  which  have  failed  to  base  themselves  upon  the  fact 
of  evolution.  For  no  theory  can  now  hope  for  "survival  which 
is  not  based  upon  the  changing  necessities  of  social  life.  The 
obvious  generalisation  that  Ihe  creation  of  dogma  carries  with 
it,  in  grim  Hegelian  fashion,  its  own  negation,  confronts  the 
observer  at  every  stage  of  the  historic  process.  And  of  theocracy 
this  has  been  the  case  in  a  peculiar  degree.  The  claims  of  its 
representatives  have  grown  as  their  acceptance  has  become  the 
more  impossible.  It  was  at  the  very  nadir  of  his  fortunes  that 
Hildebrand  made  claim  to  the  lordship  of  the  world.  It  was 
when  Garibaldi  and  his  redshirts  were  thundering  at  the  gate 
that  Pius  IX  registered  his  infallibility.  The  garment  has  been 
the  more  royally  displayed  that  the  shrunken  body  may  be  the 
better  concealed. 

Yet  two  great  truths  theocracy  has  enshrined;  and,  of  a 
certainty,  no  estimate  of  its  character  would  be  just  which  did 
not  take  account  of  their  value.  More,  perhaps,  than  any 
similar  system  of  ideas  theocracy  has  understood  the  worth  of 
dogma.  It  has  seen  that  the  secret  of  existence  is  the  preserva- 
tion of  identity.  It  has  reaUsed  the  chaos  of  instabihty.  Nor 
is  this  all.  Its  believers  have  grasped,  perhaps  more  fully 
than  any  thinkers  save  the  doctrinaire  liberals  of  the  nine- 

^  On  Bonald  the  best  descriptive  account  of  that  of  Moulinie  (Pari 
1916)  which  is,  however,  weak  in  its  criticism.  There  are  famous  essays 
by  Sainte-Beuye  in  his  "Causeries,"  Vol.  IV,  and  by  Faguet  in  his  "Politiques 
etMoralistes,"  Vol.  I.  See  also  Bourget,  "Etudes  et  Portraits,"  Vol.  Ill, 
Montesquieu,  "Le  realisme  de  Bonald." 


124        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

teenth  century,  the  difference  between  the  essence  of  a  political 
system  and  the  accidental  principles  which  arise  from  the 
method  of  its  application.  They  have  ceaselessly  insisted  on 
the  importance  of  securing  beyond  peradventure  the  funda- 
mental notions  of  their  age.  They  did,  indeed,  go  mistakenly 
further.  They  did  take  the  fatal  step  of  arguing  that  an  ideal 
to  be  true  must  be  unchanging.  Of  the  relativity  of  ideas  they 
had  no  notion;  or,  if  they  dimly  seized  its  importance,  they 
denied  its  philosophic  lightness.  For  they  deemed  it  the  busi- 
ness of  speculation  to  search  for  absolutes.  They  had  no 
patience  with  anything  save  the  eternal.  If,  in  the  result,  a 
changing  civilisation  has  been  compelled  to  desert  their  stand- 
ards, that  does  not  mean  the  total  error  of  the  ideals  for  which 
they  fought.  On  the  contrary,  that  of  which  the  historian 
must  take  constant  account  is  not  merely  the  sharpness  of 
their  vision,  but  the  accuracy  of  their  prophecy.  Again  and 
again  they  cast  a  vivid  light  upon  the  conditions  of  their  time. 
The  fact  of  their  failure  is  not  proof  of  their  ineptitude.  On 
the  contrary,  they  brought  powerful  support  to  a  theory  of 
politics  for  which,  on  other  grounds,  strong  and  insistent  jus- 
tification can  still  be  made.  What  in  brief  tney  suggested  was 
the  apotheosis  of  authority.  Liberty  to  them  was  error.  They 
tried  to  find  its  falsity  in  the  divinity  of  its  antithesis.  It  is 
rather  in  the  emphasis  of  their  application  than  its  source  that 
modern  criticism  tends  to  begin  its  attack.  And  at  least  one 
powerful  school  of  political  enquiry  has  rejected  its  premises 
rather  than  its  conclusions.  In  that  sense  it  is  still  a  living 
influence  at  the  present  time. 

The  source  of  its  curious  revivification  in  the  nineteenth 
century  is  in  no  sense  difficult  to  discover.  They  who  returned 
from  exile  in  1814  believed  that  their  experience  was  the  final 
condemnation  of  liberal  principles.  They  had  seen  the  tri- 
umph of  anarchy  in  the  name  of  freedom.  They  had  been  the 
victims  of  an  egalitarianism  for  which  history  afforded  no  prece- 
dent even  if  it  offered  an  ample  justification.  The  institutions 
they  had  inherited  had  been  ruthlessly  overthrown.  The  ideals 
they  had  cherished  were  cast  aside  in  an  unpitying  contempt. 
Tradition  had  been  butchered  that  Reason  might  have  its 
Paris  holiday;   and  to  tradition  they  were  united  by  every  tie 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        125 

of  kinship  and  of  interest.  Their  exile  had  been  the  breeder 
of  hate  rather  than  of  understanding;  and  it  was  in  a  spirit 
of  revenge  that  they  returned.  The  age  which  the  twenty-five 
full  years  of  revolution  had  turned  into  antiquity  became  for 
them  the  Saturnia  regna  of  an  earlier  time.  That  for  which 
their  kin  had  paid  with  blood  became  hallowed  because  it  had 
been  the  cause  of  suffering.  They  came  not  to  amend  but  to 
restore.  As  they  had  forgiven  nothing,  so  they  had  failed  to 
learn  the  lesson  of  their  banishment.  They  deified  the  past; 
and  in  that  vision  of  enchantment  they  discovered  a  little 
easily  the  principles  of  a  theocracy. 

This  was  in  a  particular  degree  true  of  the  Roman  Church.'^ 
No  institution  had  had  a  more  singular  history  in  the  period 
of  revolutionary  misfortune.  The  States-General,  at  the  out- 
set of  its  deliberations  had  been  in  no  sense  an  anti-clerical 
assembly.  The  mass  of  the  people  was  passionately  catholic; 
and  their  confidence  in  the  clergy  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
cahiers  of  the  Third  Estate  had  been  largely  entrusted  to 
their  hands.  They  had  ample  opportunity  to  win  for  them- 
selves the  urgent  confidence  of  those  in  whose  hands  would 
he  the  destinies  of  the  coming  revolution.  The  idea  of  a  sepa- 
ration between  Church  and  State  was,  in  1789,  present  in  the 
mind  of  no  single  practical  statesman.  The  Church  was  re- 
sponsible for  its  own  rnisfoxtiines.  To  the  popular  dislike  of 
Ultramontanism  it  gave  ground  for  action.  Its  support  of  the 
extreme  reactionists  earned  for  it  the  distrust  and  anger  of 
moderate  men;  while  the  hatred  which  the  upper  clergy  earned 
no  less  than  they  received  was  thereby  extended  to  the  mass  of 
its  members.  From  the  outset  the  clergy  seemed  to  threatfin 
the  Revolution;  and  when  the  Revolution  created  a  Republic 
their  Roman  allegiance  threatened  its  unity.  The  onset  of  war 
and  its  early  disasters  gave  an  opportunity  to  the  enemies  of 
the  Church  of  which  they  did  not  fail  to  make  good  use.  Sjis- 
picion  turned  to  intolerance,  and  from  intolerance  was  born 
an  implacaljle  persecution. 

2  On  the  character  of  the  Roman  church  at  the  time  of  the  Restoration 
see  the  essay  on  Lamennais  below.  Even  allowing  for  its  anti-clerical 
bias  M.  Debidour's  "L'Eglise  et  L'Etat  en  France  de  1789-1870"  is easUy 
the  best  treatment. 


126        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Yet  the  ills  of  the  Church  under  the  Convention  and  the  Assem- 
bly would  have  given  no  grounds  for  the  ultramontane  passions 
of  the  Restoration.  What  secured  their  onset  was  the  cal- 
culated policy  of  Napoleon.  True  to  the  principles  which  have 
made  the  name  of  Erastus  the  mistaken  symbol  of  oppression, 
he  saw  in  the  church  no  more  than  an  admirable  political  weap- 
on. He  declared  himself  a  Galilean;  and  his  absorptive  temper 
made  of  Gallicanism  a  doctrine  to  which  no  self-respecting  mem- 
ber of  the  church  could  give  adherence.  It  is,  indeed,  possible 
that  before  the  Napoleonic  era  the  declaration  of  1682  probably 
represented  the  normal  clerical  attitude.  But  when  the  princi- 
ples of  1682  resulted  in  a  papal  captivity  and  the  Organic  Arti- 
cles the  temper  of  the  church  was  bound  to  change. 

It  became  evident  to  most  that  a  trust  in  Rome  was  not  in- 
compatible with  a  faith  in  France;  and  the  transition  from  com- 
patibility to  dependence  was  almost  fatally  easy.  There  is 
something  of  poetic  justice  in  the  fact  that  a  nominal  appli- 
cation of  its  own  principles  should  thus  have  taught  the  French 
clergy  their  inherent  error.  When  Louis  XVIII  came  back  to 
Versailles  the  church  which  accompanied  him  had  new  prin- 
ciples to  maintain  and  new  standards  to  enforce.  The  tenets  of 
a  royalist  faith  they  had  always  upheld ;  and  of  his  support  they 
were  from  the  outset  assured.  But  they  had  learned  from  a 
better  experience  that  only  (so  they  deemed)  an  exclusive  and 
ultramontane  church  was  certain  of  security.  They  did  not 
perceive  that  Napoleon  had  only  attempted  the  enforcement 
of  the  very  principles  they  were  themselves  to  preach.  They 
did  not  know  that  they,  like  him,  were  encompassing  the  im- 
prisonment of  the  mind,  and  that  they,  like  him,  were  to  fail 
because  their  task  was  from  the  outset  impossible.  The  mind 
of  man  may  demand  the  ease  of  dogma,  but  it  so  demands  only 
that  it  may  destroy.  The  church  made  the  fatal  error  of  their 
persecutor  and  assumed  that  in  unity  alone  can  strength  be  dis- 
covered. They  came  back  to  enshrine  in  law  the  uniqueness 
of  their  sovereignty  and  they  only  fashioned  thereby  the  instru- 
ment of  a  second  Revolution. 

They  had  learned  nothing  in  their  exile  save  to  brood  upon 
their  misfortune.  It  was  patent  to  them  that  what  had  occured 
was  the  fruit  of  human  wickedness.    That  of  which  they  had 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         127 

need  was  a  political  organisation  whereby  the  errors  from  which 
they  had  suffered  might  become  but  a  hideous  memory.  They 
needed  a  political  theory  which  ensured  the  permanent  satisfac- 
tion of  their  demands.  Their  Hfe  was  based  upon  their  tradi- 
tions. It  was  from  their  traditions  that  they  drew  their  claims. 
(  So  it  was  that  they  erected  their  history  into  a  philosophy  that 
they  might  destroy  the  category  of  time. 

II.    THE  BASIS  OF  TRADITIONALISM 

Taine  has  refused  the  title  of  philosophers  to  the  Tradition- 
alists of  the  Restoration;  and  in  the  sense  that  it  was  their  busi- 
ness rather  to  refute  than  to  make  enquiry  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  he  was  right.  Their  fate,  indeed,  has  been  in  every  way 
somewhat  curious.  The  literary  effectiveness  of  De  Maistre, 
the  skill  with  which  he  presents  his  pessimism,  the  acuteness 
of  his  reflections — all  these  have  combined  to  give  his  work  the 
permanence  that  is  undoubtedly  its  historic  due.*  The  tragic 
interest  of  Lamennais '  life  would  of  itself  be  sufficient  to 
arouse  increasing  speculation;  but  he  becomes  of  even  greater 
importance  from  the  fact  that  the  most  vital  aspect  of  nine- 
teenth century  CathoHcism  is  in  a  special  sense  his  creation. 
The  concihatory  spirit  of  Ballanche  gives  to  all  his  speculation 
a  singular  charm  that  is  absent  from  the  work  of  his  compeers. 

Bonald  has  been  less  fortunate;  and,  in  truth,  it  is  but 
within  recent  times  that  the  value  of  his  uncritical  and  unin- 
spired dogmatism  has  been  fully  understood.*  The  rebirth  of 
a  sceptical  suspicion  of  the  worth  of  the  Republic  tended,  in- 
evitably, to  send  men  back  to  him  whom  De  Maistre  signalled 
as  his  master,^  and  from  whom,  in  the  early  days  of  his  fame, 
Lamennais  was  proud  to  receive  high  commendation.^ 

Bonald,  indeed,  lacks  all  the  stigmata  of  popularity.     His 

*  I  have  discussed  the  political  theory  of  De  Maistre  in  the  last  chapter 
of  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty." 

■•  The  real  understanding  of  Bonald  probably  dates  from  Comte,  Cf . 
"Politique  Positive"  III,  605. 

^  Cf .  the  very  interesting  correspondence  in  Vol.  XII.  of  De  Maistre 's 
collected  works  and  "Principe  Constitutif.*'  p.  493. 

*  Boutard,  "Lamennais,"  I,  154. 


128        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

life  was  the  ordinary  career  of  an  emigrant  noble.  Not  even  the 
fear  of  the  guillotine  came  to  give  it  a  touch  of  momentary  ex- 
citement. He  wrote  badly,  even  harshly,  with  all  the  ruthless, 
pettifogging  logic  of  the  medieval  scholastics.'  He  lacked  even 
the  supreme  merit  of  brevity.  He  was  totally  out  of  accord 
with  the  spirit  of  his  time.  All  for  which  it  came  to  stand  he 
branded  as  the  utmost  sin ;  all  for  which  he  cared  was  lost  at  the 
barricades  of  1830.  The  monarchy  for  which  he  cherished  so 
passionate  an  affection  destroyed  itself  by  acting  on  his  prin- 
ciples. He  urged  nothing  that  history,  if  it  did  not  falsify,  at 
any  rate  failed  to  respect.  He  did  not,  like  De  Maistre,  die  be- 
fore the  course  of  events  had  proved  the  impossibility  of  his 
ideals.  He  did  not,  like  Lamennais,  find  in  the  events  of  his 
age  the  basis  of  a  better  philosophy.  He  belonged  always  to  the 
eighteenth  century,  not,  indeed,  in  the  essentials  of  its  intel- 
tectual  attitude,  but  in  its  dogmatic  and  inflexible  spirit.^  Once 
he  had  arrived  at  his  principles,  he  did  no  more  than  devote 
himself  to  their  elaboration.  He  never  examined  his  time. 
He  was  satisfied  to  search  the  past  and  to  misread  it  that  the 
justice  of  his  claims  might  be  made  manifest.  A  single  event — 
and  it  is  impossible  to  understand  his  attitude  save  on  the  as- 
sumption that  to  him  the  Revolution  was  no  more  than  a  point 
in  time — served  as  the  basis  of  everything  he  thought  and  felt  and 
dared  so  greatly  to  hope.  He  is  the  prophet  of  an  outworn 
gospel,  so  that  his  very  watchwords  have  been  almost  forgotten. 
That  which  he  so  solemnly  preached  is,  for  the  most  part,  that 
against  which  a  democratic  society  has  been  most  solemnly 
warned.  Yet  he  is  hardly  to  blame  for  his  conclusions.  He  did 
nqjnore  than  sum  up  with  remorseless  logic  the  resultjif.  the 
reaction  of  authoritarian  temper  with  egalitarian  revoluti^on. 

He  represents  the  amazement  of  the  aristocracy  at  the  chal- 
lenge  of  a  people  whose  existence  it  had  forgotten.  He  put 
its  case  vigorously,  bluntly,  sincerely.  He  failed  completely 
to  understand  that  the  principles  of  the  Ancien  Regime  could 
ever  return.  He  could  regard  the  Revolution  only  as  a  hateful 
episode,  and  he  tried  to  explain  why  it  was  essentially  a  warn- 
ing and  an  example.    It  is  perhaps  a  little  difficult  to  explain 

'  Cf.  Sainte-Beuve,  "Causeries,"  IV,  330. 

8  As  M.  Faguet,  in  his  brilliant  study,  so  strikingly  points  out. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        129 

his  influence.  He  said  only  what  the  emigres  desired  to  hear. 
But  he  wrote  the  epitaph  of  Bourbon  Kingship  and  it  was 
assumed  that  between  his  philosophy  and  the  creed  of  Rousseau 
there  was  no  alternative.  For  thirty-five  years  he  reiterated 
his  principles  under  half  a  hundred  forms.  The  principles  of 
philology,  the  marital  relation,  the  theory  of  knowledge — from 
the  analysis  of  all  these  he  constructed  his  tremendous  sociology. 
When  the  last  criticism  has  been  made,  there  remains  some- 
thing almost  of  splendour  in  the  courage  and  the  determination 
with  which  he  applied  himself  to  his  task.  If,  in  the  light  of 
modern  change,  all  that  he  has  written  reads  like  a  bitter  de- 
fence of  special  creation  by  one  who  has  sadly  encountered  the 
DarAvinian  hypothesis,  much  may  be  pardoned  to  one  who 
loved  his  ideals  so  greatly.  And,  as  with  De  Maistre,  it  may 
even  be  suggested  that  he  the  better  served  hunian  freedom 
when  he  threw  the  implications  of  his  attitude  into  a  relief  so 
striking  and  so  logical. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  basis  of  his  philosophy  must  be  inter- 
preted from  the  angle  of  its  chronological  significance.  He 
began  to  write,  as  Sainte-Beuve^  has  pointed  out,  on  the  mor- 
row of  the  Terror.  He  had  been  a  witness  of  its  tragedies; 
andl^ecause  so  many  of  its  victims  were  of  his  order,  it  was 
inevitable  that  it  should  have  bitten  deeply  into  his  soul.  It 
was  then  natural  for  him  to  translate  that  bitterness  into  polit- 
ical terms.  He  could  see  in  the  Revolution  no  more  than  the 
coronation  of  anarchy.  It  had  shattered  the  temple  of  political 
science  and  he  must  lay  his  hand  to  its  restoration.  And  it 
was  no  less  natural  that  he  should  start  from  a  disbelief  in 
man  and  in  reason.  It  was  for  their  redintegration  that  the 
Revolution  had  been  effected.  The  individualism  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  had  been  traitorous  to  every  rational  principle 
of  social  order.  It  had  dared  to  proclaini  the  rights  of  man, 
and  it  had  embodied  its  principles  in  a  Declaration.  It  had 
declared  the  sovereignty  of  reason  and  the  Directory  was  to 
prescribe  a  confidence  in  faith.  So  he  came  to  hold  that  the 
very  'foundations  of  such  an  attitude  were  conceived  in  sin. 
The  Rights  of  Man  meant  the  execution  of  the  King;  the 
Sovereignty  of  Reason  meant  the  persecution  of  the  Catholic 

'  Sainte-Beuve,  op.  cit.,  p.  324. 


130        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Church.  Equahty  wrote  its  formulae  in  letters  of  blood,  and 
the  blood  was  the  blood  of  his  friends.  An  attitude  to  his  age 
other  than  that  of  hate  was  thus  impossible.  That  he  should 
have  undertaken  a  polemic  against  the  eighteenth  century  was 
logically  the  result  of  his  humanity.  To  the  rights  of  man  he 
would  oppose  the  rights  of  God.^°  To  the  sovereignty  6F  rea- 
son he  would  oppose  the  sovereignty  of  faith.  Since  the  ergh- 
teenth  century  had  created  a  new  philosophy,  he  would  go 
back  to  its  precursors  that  he  might  uproot  its  errors.  Every- 
thing for  which  the  Revolution  stood  he  would  ceaselessly 
denounce,  so  that  he  does  not  even  spare  the  generous  intelli- 
gence of  Madame  de  Stael.^^  He  sought  a  universal  formula 
against  Revolution  and  he  outlined  a  theodicy  that  he  might 
apply  it.  He  never,  like  De  Maistre,  admitted  the  relativity 
of  history.  He  never,  like  De  Maistre,  allowed  an  influence 
to  the  God-directed  exertions  of  great  men  on  the  one  hand, 
or  to  the  cumulative  effect  of  minute  causes  on  the  other.^^ 
The  diminution  of  universality  seemed  to  him  the  admission 
of  weakness.  The  eighteenth  century  must  not  be  spared  but 
slain.  Every  dogma  for  which  it  had  argued  he  denounced 
with  remorseless  hate.  He  erected,  in  fact,  the  negation  of  its 
principles  into  an  alchemically  mingled  compound  of  antago- 
nisms he  chose  to  call  a  philosophy. 

He  deserted  the  eighteenth  century;  and  that  he  might  the 
better  refute  its  canons  of  truth  he  went  back  to  that  which 
is  most  alien  to  its  spirit.  The  seventeenth  century  in  France 
is  the  very  embodiment  of  his  temper.  A  centralisation  which 
culminated  in  the  unquestioning  promulgation  of  divinely- 
ordained  monarchy  was  the  very  synthesis  for  which  he  was 
contending.  The  theories  of  Bosguct  were  but  those  of  a  De 
Bonald  who  had  not  yet  encountered  the  Revolution.  They  en- 
abled him  to  take  firm  hold  of  the  theory  of  Divine  Right — a 
theory  w^hich,  through  Suarez  and  Bellarmin,  took  him  back  to 
the  great  days  of  scholastic  authority.  It  is,  indeed,  vital  to 
judge  him  in  this  context.  For  De  Bonald  was  the  last  repre- 
sentative of  that  great  tradition.     His  very  method  was  the 

.  '"  "Legislation  Primitive,"  p.  93. 
^'  Cf.  his  "Considerations." 
'2  "Principe  G6ndrateur,"  p.  15. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE  MODERN   STATE         131 

dialectic  parrying  of  text  with  counter-text.  He  wrote,  as  ho 
said/^  not  as  an  orator  but  as  a  logician.  The  Revolution  gave 
him  his  premises,  and  from  the  seventeenth  century  he  drew 
his  conclusions.  The  neat  geometrical  arrangement  of  his 
material  and  his  pride  in  a  sort  of  mathematical  logic^^  send 
him  back  to  the  days  when  men  slew  truth  with  a  syllogism. 
The  writers  whom  he  loved  were  to  him  a  constant  and  en- 
during influence,  so  that  he  seems  sometimes  almost  to  have 
expected  that  the  name  of  Bossuet  would  spring  from  cold 
print  to  the  eager  confirmation  of  the  hving  tongue.  He  felt 
those  dead  who  had  thought  as  he  thought  as  part  of  a  Uving 
society,  and  it  was  thus  that  when  he  went  to  their  ideas  for 
confirmation  that  he  felt  the  justification  of  contemporary  his- 
tory. And  since  the  thought  of  the  reformers  and  the  ideo- 
logues were  absent  from  their  pages,  he  could  not  but  feel  for 
his  opponents  the  impulsive  hatred  of  strangeness.^^  The 
Revolution  was  due  to  the  rejection  of  the  natural  laws  he  had 
discovered  in  his  teachers. ^^  And  it  was  simply  for  the  restora- 
tion of  their  activity  that  he  was  concerned.  He  did  not  see 
that  thus  to  deal  with  man  in  no  more  than  his  medieval  con- 
text was  to  shut  himself  off  from  a  vital  human  experience  and 
to  demean  man  into  an  abstraction.  "Mari^"  he  said,^^  "is 
the  same  everywhere,"  and  it  was  upon  the  basis  of  that  mis- 
taken "generalisation  that  he  began  his  work.  The  "incontest- 
able authority"  he  granted  to  history  in  political  judgment 
became  the  authority  of  medieval  history,  just  as  his  religious 
text  of  truth  became  the  axioms  of  the  medieval  church. ^^  But 
no  theory  could  hope  for  acceptance  of  which  the  inductions 
were  based  on  so  factitious  and  arbitrary  a  disdain  of  men. 

III.  THE  POLITICAL  THEORY  OF  BONALD 

It  would  be  possible  to  reconstruct  the  political  theory  of  Bo- 

"  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  I,  3. 

"  Cf.  "Thdorie  du  Pouvoir,"  I,  i,  3,  p.  146.    "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social," 
p.  282. 

1*  "Observations  sur  Condorcet,"  p.  309. 

16  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  Bk.  Ill,  IV,  p.  153. 

17  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  I,  III,  p.  146. 

18  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  p.  289. 


132        AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

nald  by  asserting  the  antithesis  of  every  doctrine  for  which  the 
eighteenth  century  stood  sponsor.  As  it  asserted  the  individu- 
ahty  of  man,  and  emphasised  the  importance  of  his  uniqiie 
separatism,  so  Bonald  urged  that  only  in  his  social  context 
is  man  at  all  significant.  As  it  had  deserted  the  ways  of 
God,  so  he  proclaimed  that  only  by  treading  in  his  path  could 
salvation  be  attained.  As  it  was  fascinated  by  the  theory  of 
a  social  contract,  so  did  he  find  in  that  theory  the  head  and 
centre  of  political  disaster.  The  eighteenth  century  is  essen- 
tially an  age  of  the  sceptics;  and  Bonald,  as  a  consequence, 
constructed  a  philosophy  that  begins  and  ends  with  God. 
There  is  nothing  of  perverseness  in  all  this.  It  is  the  natural 
reaction  of  a  stern  temper  from  the  experiences  of  an  alien 
ideal.  He  asserted  the  primacy  of  God  because  he  did,  in  fact, 
believe  that  all  science  must  begin  in  this  fashion.^^  God,  for 
him,  was  essentially  the  directing  force  of  the  world  and  he 
has  not  ceased  to  govern  his  creation.^''  Indeed  Bonald  almost 
overwhelms  us  with  the  varied  arguments  which  are  intended 
to  demonstrate  the  necessity  of  a  belief  in  Divinity.  Power- 
ful arguments  they  are  not;  and  of  them  it  is  perhaps  best  to 
say  that  they  above  all  demonstrate  his  inability  to  pursue 
metaphysical  enquiry.  They  are  frequently  confused  and, 
more  rarely,  contradictory.  But  to«this  he  would  have  doubt- 
less replied  that  in  any  case  he  made  entire  abstraction 
of  philosophy. 

He  made  abstraction  of  philosophy  because  it  was  basic- 
ally individualist.'^  It  spoke  not  in  the  name  of  God,  but  of 
reason;  and  reason,  as  the  Revolution  had  taught  him,  had 
done  nothing  save  provoke  a  vain  and  fruitless  debate. 
Reason  meant  the  Convention  and  the  Directory;  Reason  had 
executed  the  fine  flower  of  the  French  nation.  It  was  clearly 
the  destruction  of  stability;  and  he  significantly  comments 
that  in  the  stable  theocracy  of  the  Jews  as  in  the  unchanging 
Spartan  kingdom  the  philosopher  had  found  no  place.  For 
them  tradition  had  been  enough,  and  yet  on  the  basis  of  that 

19  "Essai  sur  I'odrc  social,"  p.  282. 

20  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir  religieux,"  I,  i,  Ch.  3.  Cf.  I,  1,  VII,  note  on 
p.  177,  and  I,  1,  p.  132. 

"  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  II,  VI,  V,  356,  357. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        133 

ancestralism  his  age  condemned  they  had  enjoyed  a  prosperous 
history.  Nor  was  this  all.  There  was  no  unity  in  philosophy. 
Pythagoras,  and  Thales,  Zeno  and  Epicurus,  Bacon  and  Des- 
cartes are  all  in  fundamental  disagreement.  What  message 
does  philosophy  bFing  that  philosophy  does  not  also  contradict? 
So  that  therein  there  is  no  authoritative  utterance.  But  he 
who  speaks  in  the  name  of  God  speaks  a  language  that  is  com- 
mon to  all.22 

He  is  thus  without  interest  in  individual  thought.  The  only 
important  thought  is  that  of  society,  and  the  thought  of  so- 
ciety is  the  reflexion  of  the  mind  of  God.^^  So  that  when  he  is 
concerned  to  examine  man  as  a  social  being  he  is,  in  fact,  oc- 
cupied with  the  relation  of  man  to  his  creator.  If  he  can 
discover  the  laws  by  which  God  has  created  the  world,  and  by 
which  he  continues  to  govern  it,  his  problem  is  solved.  All 
he  has  then  to  do  is  to  deduce  the  consequences  of  those  laws. 
His  method  of  enquiry  is  what  might  have  been  expected  from 
one  in  whom  the  authoritarian  temper  had  been  schooled  into 
rigidity  by  the  subtle  hardness  of  the  Oratorians.  Like  a  good 
medievalist,  he  uses  his  texts  as  cannon  to  provide  a  continuous 
fire  against  the  enemy.  The  unreality  of  his  atmosphere  at 
the  outset  clings  throughout  to  his  conclusions.  He  does,  in- 
deed, make  use  of  history ;  and  an  admiring  critic  has  therein 
sought  to  discover  an  exponent  of  poUtical  realism.^^  But  the 
history  is  no  more  than  a  philosophy  teaching  by  arbitrarily 
selected  examples.  He  sought  only  for  that  which  would 
prove  the  danger  of  variety;  and  the  only  history  for  which  he 
cared  was  that  which  illustrated  its  misfortunes.  He  wanted 
no  more  than  a  stick  wherewith  to  beat  the  philosophers  of 
the  Revolution.  His  fundamental  starting-point  makes  clear 
his  whole  direction.  The  dependence  of  the  world  upon  God 
makes  the  desertion  of  his  laws  the  zenith  of  social  treason. 
The  Revolution  committed  that  sin ;  and  he  had  thus  no  other 
task  than  to  enounce  the  rules  which  will  give  ground  for  his 
accusing  hate. 

^  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir  religieux,"  I,  ii,  9. 
"^  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir  religieux,"  I,  ii,  9. 

2''  Montesquieu,  "Le  realisme  de  Bonald,"  andcf.  M.  Bourget,  "Eludes 
et  Portraits,"  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  23  ff. 


134        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

He  has,  of  course,  to  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man.^^  He 
achieves  this  end  in  his  own  grim  fashion  by  preventing  the 
escape  of  the  world  from  the  influence  of  natural  law.^^  His 
God  has  desired  man's  happiness,  and  the  laws  he  has  laid  down 
are  the  expression  of  his  will  to  that  end.  But  the  will  of  God 
(jis  unchangeable,  so  that  the  universe  is  governed  by  an  iron 
law.  Here,  of  course,  Bonald  departs  in  striking  fashion  from 
the  attitude  of  the  eighteenth  century.  He  has  none  of  the 
flexibility  of  Montesquieu.^^  God  may  create  and  he  may 
destroy;  but  all  that  he  accomplishes  he  must  achieve  on  the 
basis  of  his  preliminary  definitions.  So  that  the  na^ture  of 
man,  for  instance,  is  independent  of  God.  He  could  not  create 
a  soulless  humanity.  The  logic  of  contradiction  is  an  univer- 
sal principle,  in  order  that  the  authority  of  Bonald's  deductions 
may  be  maintained.  Miracles,  as  a  consequence,  are  outside 
the  realm  of  possibility;  and  though  Bonald  allowed  them 
later  in  his  thought  a  grudging  entrance  into  life,  he  seems 
always  to  have  resented  their  occurrence.^^  It  is  true  that 
too-zealous  Christians  have  based  a  scheme  of  existence  upon 
them.  But  the  true  philosopher  "is  freed  by  thought  from  the 
restriction  of  space  and  time;"^^  and  while  Bonald  admits  that 
miracles  are  not  metaphysically  inconceivable,  he  yet  denies 
that  God  will  so  constantly  intervene  in  the  affairs  of  men  as 
to  attempt  the  abrogation  of  his  own  ideas.  It  is  sufficient 
that  he  has  organised  the  universe.  The  business  of  men  is  to 
discover  the  method  of  its  organisation  that  they  may  apply 
its  principles  to  their  governance.^*' 

Bonald  has,  perhaps  wisely,  nowhere  given  us  any  consistent  / 
account  of  these  natural  laws.  They  result,  of  course,  in  opti- 
mism, since,  as  the  work  of  God,  they  must  be  perfect.  His- 
tory then  becomes  a  progress  towards  their  realisation,  and  the 
problem  of  the  statesman  is  mainly  shifted  to  their  appUca- 
tion.    Bonald,  indeed,  has  the  simplest  of  formulae  for  that  so- 

25  Cf.  "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social,"  p.  35. 

2«  Ibid.,  p.  70. 

"  Nor  even  of  Bossuet.  Cf.  the  "Politique,"  VII,  art.  VI,  prop.  V.  and  VI. 

28  "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social,"  p.  G7. 

29  Ibid. 

^^  "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social,"  p.  110. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         135 

lution.  The  means  of  enquiry  are  reason  and  tradition.  The 
study  of  nature  will  give  each  man  the  opportunity  of  their 
acquaintance.  He  will  at  once  observe,  for  example,  that  the 
rights  of  a  father  over  his  children,  of  a  master  over  his  servants, 
partake  of  the  order  of  nature.  They  are  necessary  to  life, 
and  what  is  necessary  is  divine.  So,  too,  in  politics,  the  prioGe^ 
search  for  necessary  governmental  relations  will  result  in  their 
immediate  discovery.  And  it  is  important  to  emphasise  that 
what  he  means  by  discovery  is  essentially  a  declaration.  Man 
does  not  make  laws ;  he  only  declares  them.  The  obvious  test 
of  the  Tightness  of  his  policy  is  whether  the  state  over  which 
he  presides  is  in  revolutibri  or  at  peace.  If  it  Js  in_revolution 
the  prince  has  clearly  embarked  upon  a  policy  that  is  contrary 
to  naturaTlaw.  The  meeting  of  the  States-General  in  1789  is 
an  example  of  such  error.  It  resulted  in  revolution.  Its  mem- 
bers endeavoured  to  make  law,  instead  of  remaining  content 
with  its  promulgation.  They  broke,  that  is  to  say,  with  tra- 
dition; and  Bonald  would  doubtless  have  urged  that  the 
execution  of  Louis  was  the  penalty  of  attempted  innovation. 

But  God  has  gone  further.^^  He  has  been  even  more  gener- 
ous to  men  in  his  gift  of  the  means  of  perception.  Language 
is  a  method  whereby  the  understanding  of  divine  law  may  be 
made  apparent.  It  was  given  to  the  first  men  that  they  might 
communicate  the  truths  they  discovered.  And  the  further 
gift  of  writing  committed  to  a  permanence  more  objective 
than  memory  the  secrets  of  each  age.  It  made  possible,  for 
instance,  in  the  Bible  the  positive  enshrinement  of  moral  and 
political  truth.  Nor  are  these  divine  laws  few  in  number.  The 
truths  of  logic  and  of  mathematics  are  of  this  order.  And 
those  of  politics  are  so  important  as  to  require  especial  means 
for  their  enforcement.  They  clearly  involve,  for  instance,  an 
absolute  and  hereditary  monarchy;  yet  many  people,  as  his- 
tory shows  and  as  Bonald  in  his  exile  at  Heidleberg  can  not 
forget,  have  lived  in  a  republic.  Such  nations,  indeed,  have 
paid  the  penalty  for  their  defiance.  JiJis-the  .habit  of  nature 
to  exact  her  compensations.  Inevitably,  since  without  such 
application  society  cannot  exist  in  its  normal  form.  A  return 
to  what  is  good  has  thus  the  continuous  assurance  of  victory. 

*i  Cf .  the  "Dissertation  sur  la  pensee  de  I'homme." 


136        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Thus  even  in  the  midst  of  these  gloomy  dogmas,  De  Bonald 
can  find  ground  for  hope.  Revolution  is  God's  medicine  to 
bring  men  back  to  his  ways.  That  is,  at  any  rate,  one  method 
of  interpreting  the  significance  of  the  Restoration. 

The  source  of  this  philosophy  is  obvious.^^  Non  est  potestas 
niso  a  deo  might  well  serve  as  its  watchword;  and  it  is  under 
the  shadow  of  Bossuet  that  it  has  been  conceived.  He  hardly, 
indeed,  admits  the  latter's  influence.  But  from  the  standpoint 
of  one  who  hated  the  eighteenth  century  a  return  to  the  ideals 
of  Bossuet  was  inevitable.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to  understand 
how  a  profound  Catholic,  impregnated  with  an  hereditary  loy- 
alty to  an  unfortunate  house,  should  have  let  his  fancy  roam 
to  the  zenith  of  its  fortunes.  Odd  sentences  of  the  New  Testa-^ 
ment  might  well  serve  to  set  the  Divine  seal  on  that  retrospec-- 
tive  adventure,  and  the  pain  of  exile  would  do  the  rest.  If  it  | 
was  objected  that  in  this  annexation  of  God  he  was  grounding 
his  system  in  intolerance,  he  might  well  reply  that  the  alterna- 
tive to  intolerance  is  intellectual  anarchy.^^  The  forces  of 
social  cohesion  cannot  have  fair  play  if  men  think  as'ffiey  wHT 
Given  his  God  as  the  creator  of  necessary  law,  it  was  inevitable 
that  he  should  cease  to  regard  the  world  as  self -determining. 
Nor  was  it  less  inevitable  that  the  experience  of  Bonald  should 
colour  his  interpretation  of  that  law.  All  political  philosophies 
are  the  reaction  of  temperament  upon  its  chronological  l)er- 
spective.  If  God  has  made  the  world  power  must  come  trom 
him,  and  power  in  any  legitimate  form  Bonald  could  hardly 
concede  to  men  for  whom  he  had  so  profound  a  hate.  So  that 
he  could  admit  legitimacy  only  to  the  house  with  which  he 
had  associated  his  fortunes,  and  he  was  then  wilhng  to  identify  - 
the  legitimate  with  the  divine.  Per  me  reges  regnant  et  legum  con- 
ditores  justa  decerunt  received  a  new  beauty  when  applied  to  the 
House  of  Bourbon.  But  to  have  admitted  its  application  to  Na- 
poleon would  have  been  a  self-condemnation  to  perpetual  exile. 

IV.    THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  INDIVIDUAL 

His  God  is  clearly  one  who  will  restore  an  order  that  he  loves. 
Bonald  has  been  terrified  at  the  results  of  individualism;  and 
32  Cf.  "Romans,"  XIII,  1,  with  Th^orie  de  Pouvoir,  I,  ii,  p.  1.35. 
^  "Oeuvres,"  X,  258. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         137 

authority  is  the  chart  by  which  he  is  to  find  the  haven  of  relief 
from  its  burdens.  It  is  perhaps  for  this  reason  that  the  God  he 
depicts  is  so  much  more  stern  and  far  off  than  that  of  his  mas- 
ters. With  both  Bossuet  and  Aquinas  God  is  one  who  continually 
influences  the  course  of  life;  but  -they  had  not,  like  Bonald, 
hved  in  a  time  of  revolution.^*  Change  to  him  has  become  the 
synonym  of  evil  and  he  binds  his  God  to  act  but  seldom  that 
the  rightness  of  a  static  organisation  may  be  manifest.  And 
since  it  is  individualism  that  he  is  concerned  to  combat  he  must 
elevate  the  value  of  society.  It  is  necessary  to  the  existence  of 
rnajL~  Tt  is  true  that  a  certain  individualism  results  from  the 
relation  of  God  with  him  whom  he  created  in  his  own  image; 
yet  that  very  relation  leads  man  to  contact  with  his  fellows 
that  they  may  in  common  fulfil  the  principles  of  their  origin. 
AndjL  indeed;  man  canno.t  live. alone.  All  that  he  is  he  owes 
to  society  and  only  as  a  member  of  it  is  he  intelligible.  His 
theory  of  language  is  used  to  confirm  this  attitude. ^^  For  an 
individual  who  stood  without  society  could  not  inherit  the 
means  of  grasping  the  laws  governing  the  universe  by  which  he 
is  confronted.  The  only  real  being  is  the  social  being.^^  The 
only  man  who  has  the  opportunity  to  develop  his  powers  is  a 
rnember  of  a  group.  Bonald  is  thus  able,  and  with  much  force, 
to  make  shoTt  shrift  with  Rousseau's  state  of  nature.  To  picture 
a  world  without  organisation  is,  for  him,  to  misinterpret  the 
whole  meaning  of  creation.  It  is  to  picture  a  world  without  law, 
and  the  one  thing  that  can  be  posited  is  the  existence  of  law.  He 
points  out  acutely  that  when  Rousseau  urged  men  to  live  accord- 
ing^to  nature,  he  did,  in  fact,  make  tacit  acceptance  of  principles 
inherent  ni  its  order.  But  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  prin- 
ciples of  this  kind  can  be  discovered  and  maintained  in  the  un- 
genial  terrors  of  savage  existence.^^  For  the  attainment  of  the 
life  Rousseau  desired  a  social  existence  is  essen-tial;  and  its  at- 

MCf.*'De.Reg.Prin."III,VII,  and  Bossuet,  "Politique,"  VII,  6,  V  and 
VI. 

^  "Legislation  Primitive."  I,  156.  This  theory  of  language  has  been 
effectively  criticised  by  M.  Ferraz  in  the  first  volume  of  his  "Histoire 
de  Philosophie." 

36  "Legislation  Primitive,"  II,  170. 

"  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  II,  IV,  V,  p.  329-30. 


138        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

tainment  would  be  undesirable  unless  the  primary  fact  of  society 
were  at  the  outset  admitted. 

For  Bonaldj  indeed, — and  here  he  differed  radically  from 
Aquinas — society  is  prior  to  the  individual.  The  latter  derives 
his  meaning  simply  from  his  social  context,  where  to  Aquinas 
the  function  of  society  is  not  to  create  but  to  perfect  the  life  of 
man.  But  for  Bonald  this  is  too  narrow  a  conception.  His_ 
society  is  in  a  real  sense  a  person.^^  It  is  not  a  mere  algebraic 
bracket,  linking  men  together  into  an  artificial  unity.  It  is 
one,  and  indivisible.^^  It  is  organic,  and,  Uke  an  organism, 
it  has  a  will  whereby  to  make  manifest  its  desires.^"  Society 
is  thus  rendered  independent  of  individuals.  It  exists  of  and 
in  itself  and  they  do  no  more  than  contribute  to  the  richness~of 
a  life  from  which  they  in  turn  draw  nourishment."*^  The  general 
will  of  this  gociety,  moreover,  is  the  divine  will  conscious  of 
those  necessary  laws  upon  which  he  lays  such  striking  em- 
phasis. But  will  rnust  be  directed  that  it  may  become  manifest 
in  action;  and  it  is  to  the  monarch  that  he  confines  its  direction 
that  it  may  take  form  in  legislation.  The  social  will  so  ex- 
pressed, moreover,  is  superior  in  its  claim  to  all  other.  It  is 
further  freed  from  the  embarrassment  of  superiority,  since  than 
society  there  can  be  no  higher  being.  Nor  will  it  act  unwisely. 
"The  general  will  of  society,"  he  wrote,  "is  necessarily  con- 
servative in  character.  "^2  That  is  to  say  it  is  conservative 
when  it  is  freed  from  the  dangerous  influence  of  individual  or 
national  wills  which  in  their  search  for  substantive  form  take 
shape  in  revolutions.  If  it  is  somewhat  mystical,  it  is  none  the 
less  an  intelligible  attitude.  That  it  derives  from  Rousseau  it 
is  certainly  difficult  to  doubt;  but  whereas  Rousseau  drew  from 
it  the  principle  of  national  sovereignity  the  whole  point  of 
Bonald 's  conception  is  to  urge  cause  against  that  principle. 
For  national  sovereignty  is,  in  its  essence,  an  individualist 
doctrine;  and  it  is  from  the  organic  character  of  society  that 

"8  Ihid.,  I,  1,  p.  28. 

33  Ibid.,  II,  IV,  V,  p.  329-30. 

« Ibid.,  II,  IV,  p.  128. 

*^  Ibid.,  I,  ii,  passim. 

^2  "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social,"  p.  33. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        139 

Bonald  is  anxious  to  deduce  the  a  priori  impossibility  of  that 
attitude. 

lie  has  made  the  individual  but  a  link  in  a  chain.  Society  as 
a  whole  is  thus  the  real  founder  of  civilisation.  Great  men  are 
no  longer  entitled  to  credit  for  their  discovery  since  it  is  by 
reason  of  their  social  gifts  that  they  have  attained  to  greatness. 
They  could  not  have  worked  without  the  instrument  of  lan- 
guage that  their  thought  might  receive  expression;  and  the  ob- 
ject of  language  was  social  enrichment.  So  that  for  him  a  great 
man  isjio  more  than  the  reflexion  of  his  time,  a  servant  of  its 
ne'eds.  ItTs  therefrom  that  he  should  draw  his  inspiration.  Inso- 
faf  as  he  follows  the  path  of  his  own  fortune  he  deserts  both  his 
genius  and  his  function. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  he  has  in  mind  those  daring 
spirits  of  the  Revolution  whose  ability  might  so  easily  have 
been  deflected  into  channels  less  tragic  in  their  consequence. 
But  they  followed  the  call  of  their  ambition  and  he  is  accord- 
ingly tempted  even  further  in  the  direction  of  their  control. 
Hedoes__not  merely  limit  individuality.  He  insists  upon  its 
socia,Tly  dangerous  character.  Wherever  he  sees  the  exercise 
of  personality  he  urges  that  it  is  the  root  of  crime.  For,  at  the 
outset,  he  has  the  material  for  its  condemnation.  He  has  in- 
sisted upon  the  supremacy  of  society.  He  has  reduced  men  to 
no  more  than  unimportant  functions  of  its  power.  Thereby 
he  has  the  right  to  attack  all  which  might  in  some  sort  detract 
from  its  omnipotence. 

He  equates  individualism  with  anarchy^  and  he  makes  some 
misuse  of  history  to  demonstrate  the  truth  of  his  attitude.  The 
Reformation  to  him  is  no  more  than  the  idle  pride  of  a  monk 
engaged  in  the  defence  of  his  order.**  Luther  called  to  his  aid 
all  the  evil  passions  and  avid  interests  alike  of  men  and  princes. 
He  cast  a  torch  into  a  sea  of  oil  and  the  result  was  the  ghastly 
conflagration  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Here  was  the  influence 
of  individual  talent  refusing  to  take  its  stand  on  the  firm  basis 
of  tradition.  Luther  sought  out  novelty;  and  society  paid  the 
penalty  for  the  passion  of  his  misinterpreted  conclusions.     So 

^^  Cf.  Mauduit,  "Les  Conceptions  Politiques  et  Sociales  de  Bonald," 
p.  83. 

«  "Th(?orie  du  Pouvoir,"  II,  v,  vi,  283-4. 


140        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

with  Calvin*^  and  with  Henry  VIII. ^^  In  each  case  we  have  a 
man  determined  to  give  the  freest  play  to  his  self-will;  and  in 
each  case  a  reign  of  terror  is  the  consequence.  For  they  put 
their  trust  in  an  opinion  to  which  age  had  failed  to  give  the 
sanction  of  traditional  affection.  They  urged  a  cause  based 
on  no  more  than  reason.  It  was  inevitable  that  men  should 
arise  to  contradict  their  conclusions  and  to  sacrifice  the  blood 
of  others  in  the  pursuit  of  proof.  They  made  a  fatal  error. 
They  did  not  attempt  the  preservation  of  what  had  been 
proved  by  time.  They  attempted  to  examine  and  of  this  the 
social  consequence  is  dispersion.  But  of  dispersion  the  eldest 
child  is  anarchy. 

This,  too,  is  the  cause  of  that  ceaseless  multiplication  of 
Protestant  opinion  he  deemed  so  vast  an  evil.*^  For  what  in 
truth  Luther  achieved  was  to  make  each  man  the  sole  judge 
alike  of  belief  and  practice.  But  that  is  to  preach  a  mental 
equality  which  can  only  result  in  the  degradation  of  principle. 
Little  by  little  each  will  pare  away  from  the  body  of  accepted 
tradition  that  which  he  cannot  accept  until  atheism  is  the 
result.^^  Between  Catholicism  and  atheism  he  sees  no  half- 
way house.^^  To  reject  the  one  is  to  embrace  the  other.  To 
reject  the  one  is  to  replace  divine  invention  by  the  fiendish 
ingenuity  of  men.^"  For  those  who  once  question  the  funda- 
mental dogmas  fail  entirely  to  perceive  that  the  principles  of 
social  religion  have  been  established  for  all  time.  Critically 
to  estimate  their  validity  by  the  degree  of  their  personal  inac- 
ceptability  is  to  strike  a  fatal  blow  at  the  root  of  morality.  For 
no  blow  can  be  struck  at  the  foundations  of  religious  order  which 
does  not  react  on  the  pohtical  structure.^^  Pohtical  and  reh- 
gious  strife  always  develop  along  parallel  hnes.  So,  for  example, 
the  real  source  of  the  French  Revolution  is  to  be  found  in  the 
teaching  of  Calvin.    To  urge  the  priesthood  of  believers  in  the 

« Ibid.,  II,  i,  IV,  38. 
« Ibid.,  292. 
*■>  Ibid.,  296. 
■  "8  Ibid.,  350. 
^9  Ibid.,  353  f. 
"s"  Ibid.,  177. 
"  Ibid.,  306,  340. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         141 

sixteenth  century  is  to  send  Louis  XVI  to  the  scaffold  in  the 
eighteenth.  So  closely  is  religion  embedded  in  the  framework 
of  society  that  he  who  develops  religious  change  is  bound  to 
seek  political  change  also  that  the  structure  may  be  altered  to 
meet  his  religious  needs.  So  the  supposed  constitution  which 
Hnuted  Louis'  power  was  no  more,  in  sober  truth,  than  an  at- 
tempt at  the  provision  of  opportunity  for  Calvinist  growth. 
It  thus  is  the  destruction  of  that  unity  which  alone  makes  possi- 
ble the  continuance  of  social  order. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  grandchild  of  reform  is  philosophy  and 
from  its  impassione3~curiosity  has  been  born  the  most  deadly 
error.  Philosophy — so  Bonald  urges — has  no  function  save 
that  of  de'struction.^^  Its  guides  are  self-interest  and  passion. 
It  detlffones  God  to  replace  him  by  nature,  and  each  of  her 
devotees  interprets  differently  her  meaning.  Religion  becomes 
unnecessary.  The  people  dethrone  power  to  crown  law.  The 
old  love  of  one's^neighbour  is  removed  to  give  place  to  some 
philanthropy  he  can  hardly  bring  himself  to  describe.^^  The 
philosopher  dispenses  with  the  Atonement;  and  man  thus 
being  by  definition  good  society  is  reduced  from  the  necessary 
condition  of  existence  to  no  more  than  a  business  association. 
It  is  asked  to  justify  itself  by  the  terms  of  its  contractual  insti- 
tution. Yet  the  very  sceptics  who  thus  remorselessly  examine 
arejefused  by  their  own  logic.  A  contract  supposes  power  for 
otherwise  its  enforcement  is  impossible.^'*  But  a  contract  can- 
i;ot_con^titute  that  which  would  be  its  own  negation.  A  con- 
tract involves  the  ideal  of  equality  between  the  contracting 
parties;  but  that  very  equality  is  born  of  power. ^^  Those  who 
would  make  the  possession  of  power  dependent  upon  its  useful 
exercise  forget  its  origin.  Power  comes  from  God,  and  he  alone 
can  set  conditions  to  its  use.  If  men  could  so  limit  it,  it  would 
no  longer  be  itself.  Its  identity  would  be  destroyed.  It  would 
be  sheerly  arbitrary  in  character — the  creature  of  popular  whim 
and  fantasy.  But  the  power  which  is  instituted  by  God  is  in 
essence  different.    Itu.aa£iireg_EQan  freedom  for  it  has  been  insti- 

62  Ibid.,  22. 

^  Ibid.,335. 

^*  "Principe  Constitutif,"  p.  450. 

"  "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social,"  p.  99. 


142        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

tuted  upon  the  basis  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  the 
universe. 

And  a  further  consequence  must  be  drawn.  Ifjhe  true  sover- 
eign of  the  universe  is  God  then  everyone,  no  less  the  sovereign 
than  his  subjects,  have  duties  towards  him.^^  He  has  set  tlie 
rhythm  of  Life  and  they  must  make  possible  the  fulfilment  of 
its  motif.  Their  right  thus  becomes  no  more  than  the  right  to 
fulfil  their  duty,  the  right  to  act  in  accordance  with  the  will 
of  God.  In  such  an  aspect  the  folly  of  those  who  would  draw 
up  a  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man  is  self-evident.  For  while 
they  affirm  the  equality  of  men's  rights  they  affirm  no  less  the 
right  to  property.  But  what  becomes  of  property  where  some 
men,  equal  in  the  theoretic  possession  of  rights,  are  yet  without 
the  means  of  subsistence?  Clearly  the  denial  of  the  rhythm 
Bonald  has  postulated  creates  a  deadly  rhythm  of  its  own.  The 
acceptance  of  individualism  crushes  into  atoms  the  very  basis 
of  society.  By  making  the  social  question  something  to  be 
resolved  by  reason,  instead  of  admitting  that  it  is  from  the 
outset  dependent  on  God,  and  is  thus  justified  without  the 
need  of  social  response,  it  leaves  open  a  path  for  every  method 
of  anarchic  destruction."  No  one,  he  urges,  dare  accept  the 
claim  of  science  to  make  men  better  by  making  them  intellec- 
tually enlightened.  On  the  contrary,  the  result  of  increasing 
knowledge  is  the  desire  of  domination.  The  individual  seelcs 
rather  for  means  to  satisfy  his  faculty  of  self-absorption  than 
to  accomplish  social  good.  To  proclaim  the  existence  of  rights 
is  to  make  of  each  man  a  potential  tyrant.  The  philosopher 
who  proclaims  the  advent  of  liberty  only  ensures  the  regime  of 
anarchy.  For  to  question  is  to  destroy.  To  question  is  to 
satisfy  one's  whim  and  though  such  caprice  has  not  made  the 
world,  it  may  yet  destroy  it.  And  when  caprice  has  been  iden- 
tified with  individuality  the  transition  to  traditionalism  has 
been  made.  For  each  man  then  contributes  his  own  restless- 
ness to  the  disturbance  of  the  social  fabric.  The  logical  result 
of  the  eighteenth  century  is  thus  obviously  the  horrors  of  the 
Revolution. 

It  is,  of  course,  obvious  that  the  source  of  this  criticism  is 

^8  "Essai  analytique,"  p.  57. 

"  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  iv,  v,  356. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         143 

the  famous  polemic  by  Bossuet  against  the  Reformation.^^ 
"Those  who  create  revolt  in  the  name  of  freedom  become  them- 
selves tyrants."  So  it  was  Bossuet  wrote,  and  his  words  might 
be  the  text  of  Bonald's  examination.  Urging  as  he  docs  the 
unity  of_society,  he  denies  the  validity  of  all  enquiry,  political 
no  less  than  religious,  on  the  ground  that  it  destroys  that  unity. 
He_searches,  out  each  pretext  of  the  eighteenth  century  for  the 
denial  of  the  dogmas  of  the  ancien  regime ,  and  erects  their 
negations  into  new  dogmas.  Fundamentally  he  attacks  that 
individualism  which  Comte,  in  a  fit  of  temper,^^  once  dismissed 
abruptly  as  the  disease  of  the  Western  world.  Without  unity 
of  opinion  and  belief  there  cannot  be  hope  of  social  survival. 
The  very  fact  of  the  Revolution  is  the  evidence  of  this  truth. 
To  insist  on  the  value  of  the  individual,  to  erect  into  a  system, 
as  Rousseau  did,  his  right  to  self-development  is  to  misinter- 
pret the  organic  nature  of  society.  An  organism  presupposes 
nervous  co-ordination,  and  of  that  co-ordination  freedom  of 
belief  is  the  main  antagonist.  So  there  must  be  but  one  re- 
Hgion  in  France;  for  the  very  existence  of  other  confessions 
secretes  the  germ  of  social  disaster.  And  this  is  for  him  the 
more  true  in  the  case  of  Protestant  dogma,  since  its  basis  is 
the  primacy  of  the  individual.  It  thus  becomes  the  business 
of  the  statesman  to  ward  off  the  danger  of  anarchy.  He  must 
insist  on  the  necessity  of  uniformity.  "Unless"  he  wrote  in  a 
tremendous  sentence,  "unless  we  have  a  religious  and  political 
unity,  man  cannot  discover  truth,  nor  can  society  hope  for 
salyatioh."^" 

V.    IMPLICATIONS  OF  THE  ATTACK 

A  CURIOUS  trinitarianism  pervades  the  whole  speculation  of 
Bonald,  and  it  is  upon  its  basis  that  he  erected  his  social  philos- 
ophy." For  the  number  three  he  seems  to  have  cherished  a 
peculiar  weakness,  so  that,  like  the  devotees  of  the  beast  in 
Revelations,  he  is  everywhere  able  to  discover  the  operation  of 

68  Cf.  Bossuet,  "Hist,  des  Variations,"  Bk  I,  pp.  316,  340,  419,  etc. 
"  "Politique  Positive,"  iii,  614. 
*"  "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social,"  p.  33. 
*'  Cf.  Faguet,  op.  cit.,  i,  p. 


144        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

a  threefold  cause.  For  some  abstract  reason  the  source  of 
which  remains  strangely  obscure,  he  beUeved  that  from  a  be- 
lief that  the  cause  is  to  the  means,  as  the  means  is  to  the  effect, 
the  mind  can  solve  all  political  questions.  The  business  of 
society,  whether  domestic  or  political  or  religious,  becomes  then 
the  realisation  of  that  relationship.  Perfection  is  simplified 
into  its  permanent  attaiirnient.'^^ 

He  had  no  difficulty  in  deciphering  its  details.^-^  Domestic 
society  is  clearly  composed  of  three  elements.  The  father  is 
the  cause,  the  mother  the  means,  the  child  is  the  effect.  Since 
the  father  is  the  cause,  he  must  clearly  have  power,  for,  other- 
wise, the  division  of  it  would  destroy  its  efficacy.  Nor  can 
that  power  be  abrogated.  In  the  eyes  of  its  parents,  for  ex- 
ample, a  child  is  always  a  minor.  That  is  why  primitive  society 
gave  to  the  head  of  the  family  the  power  of  fife  and  death.  That 
is  why  the  woman  taken  in  adultery  may  be  slain  without 
mercy  by  her  husband.  The  wife,  indeed,  does  no  more  than 
receive  from  her  husband  the  power  of  reproduction.  Her  one 
duty  is  to  obey  him.  As  she  is  midway  between  child  and  man, 
so  she  partakes  of  the  nature  of  both.  To  the  one  she  issues 
commands,  to  the  other  she  offers  submission.  The  child  itself 
has  no  function  save  to  obey.  Were  it  otherwise  the  unity  of 
family  power  would  clearly  be  destroyed.  Nor  is  this  unfair 
to  the  child  who,  in  receiving  from  his  parents  the  gift  of  lan- 
guage owes  to  them  his  most  precious  possession.  For  without 
them  thought  would  thus  have  been  impossible,  and  his  obedi- 
ence is  the  price  he  pays  for  so  unique  a  privilege.^^ 
1  The  function  of  domestic  society  he  regards  as  simply  re- 
productive. Man  may  be  mortal,  but  the  society  to  which  he 
belongs  is  imperishable.  He  thus  owes  to  it  the  duty  of  repro- 
duction  and  it  is  for  that  purpose  the  family  has  been  estab- 

^Ushed.  Bonald  has  thus  the  greater  reason  for  denying  the 
importance  of  the  individual.     It  is  only  as  a  member  of  the 

/family-group  that  he  is  entitled  to  consideration.  It  is  essen- 
tially that  group  which  is  the  real  unit  of  society.  Only  from 
it  does  social  function  spring.    Man  himself  is  only  an  incident 

«2  "Principe  Constitutif,"  p.  441  f . 
63  Ibid.,  p.  445. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        145 

in  a  succession  of  births  so  vast  as  to  make  him  infinitesimal 
i  a-£  QiB^mson . 

If  the  family  is  thus  the^social  unit  one  can  clearly  discern 
therein  two  types.  The  ordinary  family  does  no  more  than 
guard  its  daily  interests.  The  care  of  its  needs  exhausts  its 
time  and  its  capacities.  It  has  no  more  to  do  than  to  maintain 
itself  in  existence,  without  being  a  burden  upon  its  fellow-men. 
It  is  important  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  population.  It 
is  the  broad  base  upon  which  a  finer  and  more  complex  structure 
may  be  made  to  rest.  The  noble  family  is  different.  The 
credentials  of  birth  demonstrate  that  it  has  passed  the  stage 
of  the  worker's  inevitable  inertia.  It  is  occupied  with  the 
defence  of  society,  the  student  of  its  problems,  the  resolver  of 
its  doubts.  It  may  thus  rightly  demand  the  privileges  that 
come  from  this  self-sacrifice.  It  has  leaped  beyond  the  toil- 
some and  narrowing  cares  of  daily  existence.  It  alone  is  really 
fitted  to  deal  with  the  great  problems  of  men.  There  is  nothing 
sordid  or  meagre  in  the  subject  of  its  contemplation.  It  thinks 
on  a  higher  plane  of  Kfe.  It  is  accustomed  to  that  objectivity 
of  attitude  which  alone  makes  possible  a  social  existence.^^ 

The  argument  is  as  old  as  Aristotle,  and  no  better  than  when 
he  made  it.  What  in  truth  he  was  attempting  was  the  discov- 
ery of  a  basis  for  the  family  organisation  of  the  ancien  regime. 
His  "famille  ordinaire"  is  no  more  than  the  peasant-family  of 
eighteenth  century  France  and  because  it  was  then  powerless 
he  strives  to  demonstrate  that  it  is  in  fact  actually  unfitted  for 
political  faculties.  It  was  with  a  similar  purpose  that  the 
'^famille  nohle"  should  have  the  typical  attributes  of  a  family 
such  as  his  own.  The  army  and  the  magistracy  were  recruited 
from  its  ranks;  what  more  natural  than  to  assume  that  they 
are  so  recruited  because  their  capacity  fits  them  for  that  type 
of  labour?  He  insists  on  the  value  of  an  hereditary  nobility 
merely  to  ensure  the  permanence  of  that  order  and  where  he 
argues  for  its  indispensability  he  means  no  more  than  that  he 
could  not  wish  it  otherwise^^  So^^oo^is  to  be  understood  his 
contempt  for  property  and  age.  He  rejects  the  latter  as  a 
classification  of  service  "because  it  is  necessary  to  choose  use- 

"  Cf .  what  is  said  below  of  M.  Bourget's  reconstruction  of  these 
arguments. 


146        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

ful  men,"^*  and  utility  depends  on  class  and  not  on  maturity; 
moreover  an  indiscriminate  choice  would  result  in  disorder,^^ 
He  rejects  property  because  it  will  open  the  path  to  indiscrimi- 
nate ambition.  He  is,  in  fact,  looking  back  on  the  Revolution 
and  fearing  the  advent  of  the  middle  class.  So,  too,  may  be 
explained  his  insistence  on  the  superiority  of  the  agricultural 
family .^^  Industry  is  the  enemy  of  order.  It  is  the  captains 
of  industry  who  continuously  insist  on  the  value  of  independ- 
ence. It  is  commerce  which  has  been  the  parent  of  wars  and 
of  the  mad  doctrine  of  liberty.  From  it  has  sprung  that  yearn- 
ing for  luxury  which  is  the  mother  of  decay.  It  gives  rise  to  a 
superabundance  of  population.  It  results  in  the  dispersion  of 
family  unity.  With  agriculture  all  is  different.  The  soil  nour- 
ishes those  to  whom  it  gives  birth.  Almost  in  the  manner  of 
the  Physiocrats,  but  without  their  glowing  discrimination,  he 
paints  a  picture  of  the  serene  joys  of  agricultural  existence.^^ 
He  insists  on  its  solidarity.  It  unifies  by  the  nature  of  the 
occupation  it  affords.  It  makes  no  distinction  between  master 
and  servant.  It  permits  of  ancestralism  and  of  a  common  toil. 
It  achieves  a  kinship  with  nature  and  the  production  of  all  that 
men  truly  require  for  their  satisfaction.^^  He  shows  no  small 
contempt  for  the  industrialism  of  Adam  Smith,^*'  and,  at  least 
by  implication,  the  idealising  reforms  of  Saint-Simon.  The 
division  of  labour  is  the  coronation  of  individualism  and  he  will 
have  none  of  it.  He  loves  too  deeply  the  solid  conservatism 
of  the  French  peasantry  to  be  willing  to  depart  from  their  ways. 
For,  after  all,  it  was  they  who  supported  the  king  and  the  church. 
It  was  from  the  cities  that  sprang  disturbing  thoughts.  It  was 
business  men  who  had  quarrelled  with  the  old  economic  order 
and  erected  their  impatience  into  a  vicious  philosophy.  He 
could  compare  Paris  with  Brittany  and  he  could  hardly  doubt 
the  reason  for  their  distinction.  Paris  was  industrial  and  in. 
Paris  had  been  born  the  wildest  theories  of  social  organisation. 

"^  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  V,  vii. 

««  "Principe  Constitutif,"  Ch.  IX. 

*'  Pensees  Diverses,  p.  6. 

'^  La  famille  Agricole  et  Industrielle." 

«9  Cf.  "Melanges,"  p.  441. 
'0  Ibid.,  p.  505. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         147 

But  in  Brittany  men  inherited  the  ideas  of  their  fathers  and 
to  question  had  become  not  less  than  to  sin. 

The  union  of  famihes  is  the  State;  and  it  was  here,  perhaps 
most  vividly,  that  Bonald  showed  in  his  narrow  traditionalism 
the  influence  of  the  Revolution,  "  When  God  wished  to  punish 
France,"  he  once  wrote  in  an  amazing  sentence,^^  "he  with- 
drew the  Bourbons  from  its  governance."  His  whole  effort, 
in  fact,  is  simply  the  attempt  to  discover  a  political  structure 
which  should  obviate  the  possibility  of  their  expulsion.  He 
desires  the  construction  of  a  static  society  on  the  principles  of 
the  ancien  regime.  He  thus  makes  the  object  of  the  state 
essentially  conservation.  Just  as  the  family  provides  society 
with  its  members,  so  does  the  state  aim  at  the  preservation  of 
peace  between  them.  But  to  that  end  it  has  need  of  an  instru- 
ment. It  has  to  prevent  the  conflict  of  individual  wills  from 
resulting  in  the  destruction  of  the  body  politic.  It  has  to  see 
to  it  that  a  continuous  progress  is  made  towards  the  realisation 
of  those  necessary  relations  that  are  the  declaration  of  the  will 
oT~God.  It  is  not  easy  to  mistake  their  nature;  for  all  Bonald 
has  really  attempted  in  their  statement  is  to  idealise  that  which 
the  Revolution  came  to  deny.  If  he  has  succeeded  in  conceal- 
ing his  particularism  in  a  fine  cloud  of  apparent  abstractions, 
that  does  not  hide  the  fact  that  it  is  a  particular  problem  he 
has  in  mind.  The  "constituted"  society  upon  which  he  lays 
so  much  emphasis  may  be  one  in  which  "necessary  relatiolii- 
shTps"  are  observed;  but  what  Bonald  means  by  "necessary 
relationship  "  is  simply  an  obedience  to  his  prejudices.  4/' non- 
constituted  society"  is  but  one  that  has  striven  to  work  out 
its  own  political  salvation,  and  in  the  process  has  discovered 
that  there  are  truths  of  which  even  the  great  Bossuet  did  not 
dream. 

He  is  at  any  ratejaghi.in  the  assertion  that  society  is  given 
Qiidthat_since  it  is  given  it  must  be  organised.  For  whatever 
society  is,  an  inchoate  and  discrete  mass  it  is  not.  The_funda- 
mental  question  of  politics  is  thus  a  problem  in  the  method  of 


"  "Pensees  Diverses,"  p.  172. 


148        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

organisation.  What  is  the  nature  of  sovereignty?  Why  should 
one  man  rule  over  another?  Bonald  sees  clearly  enough  that 
the  problem  of  sovereignty  is  not  merely  a  question  of  power 
but  also  that,  in  some  sort,  it  is  a  question  where  only  the  argu- 
ments of  reason  can  apply.  For  him  all  theories  of  sovereignty 
reduce  themselves,  in  the  main,  to  two  types.  Men  rule 
either  by  virtue  of  divine  right  or  from  the  authority  of  a  social 
contract.  Bonald,  of  course,  has  no  choice  _in  5uch  an  alterna- 
tive. Society  is"  the  creation  of  God.  Omnis  potestas  est  a  deo; 
and  we  may  cease  the  vanity  of  argument.  Power  is  a  social 
institution  and  the  divinity  of  social  institutions  is  simply  ob- 
vious. He  has  no  patience  with  the  theory  of  a  social  contract.''^ 
It  is  obvious  to  him  that  the  idea  not  merely  most  repugnant 
but  in  truth  most  inconceivable  to  men  is  that  of  their  subjec- 
tion to  equals.  It  is  contrary  to  human  psychology.  Only 
where  some  are  in  the  position  of  inferiors  is  there  a  willingness 
to  accept  so  hard  but  so  necessary  a  fact.  Nor  does  he  believe 
that  a  social  contract  can  arise  before  there  is  power;  for  a 
contract  implies  the  idea  of  organisation  and  to  organisation 
power  is  already  essential.  That  a  social  contract  is  impossible 
once  the  existence  of  power  has  been  admitted  is  of  course 
obvious;  for  once  it  is  present  there  is  no  longer  that  equality 
of  status  which  permits  of  its  institution  on  valid  terms.^^ 

He  urges  the  necessity  of  power  because  he  is  convinced  of 
its  naturalness.  It  arises  in  society  just  as  in  a  crowd  it  is 
always  the  custom  for  some  one  man  to  take  charge.  He  has 
no  confidence  in  the  disposition  of  a  mass  of  men.  It  lacks 
direction  and  wisdom.  It  cries  out  for  a  leader.  It  can  only 
be  transformed  into  a  society  when  someone  has  given  it  func- 
tions to  perform,  orders  to  obey.''^  Until  then  it  will  be  found 
always  to  be  unhappy  and  in  confusion.  He  urges  that  the 
primary  desire  of  a  people  is  for  safety  and  that  it  is  their  habit 
to  seek  for  the  leader  who  is  most  likely  to  secure  it.  The  crowd 
without  a  leader  is  like  a  child  without  its  parent.  It  lacks  the 
raison  d'etre  of  its  existence.'^    It  has  none  of  the  elements  of 

'2  "Principe  Contitutif,"  p.  449. 
"  Ibid.  p.  450. 

'4  "Demonstr.  Phil.,"  p.  108-9. 
'^  "Pensees  Diverses,"  p.  12. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         149 

self-preservation.  Power  is  thus  the  offspring  of  necessity. 
There  must  be  somelmaster  of  men  in  order  that  men  may  be 
saved. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  there  is  much  of  truth  in  such  cin 
attitude.  But  Bonald  could  not,  of  course,  fail  to  realise  that 
he  has  done  no  more  than  push  his  enquiry  back  rather  than 
solve  it.  If  all  that  society  required  was  leadership,  the  usurpa- 
tfoii  of  Napoleon  would  be  justified.  The  problem  clearly  has 
been  that  of  the  organisation  of  power.  The  need  is  to  discover 
the  seat  of  an  authority  which  must  be  postulated  as  essential 
to  existence. 

Bonald's  answer  to  this  question  has  in  it  but  little  original- 
ity His  theory  of  political  organisation  is  Uttle  more  than  a 
restatement  of  Bossuet's,  but  of  a  Bossuet  whom  the  Revolu- 
tidnTias  made  a  httle  plaintive  and  almost  tragically  unreal. 
He  starts  out  from  two  fundamental  principles.  Prifl£jgs_are 
the  ministers  of  God.J^  They  are  the  ministers  of  God,  no 
doubt,  thatr  then-  position  may  be  unassailable  by  a  bourgeoisie 
which  has  listened  to  the  blasphemies  of  Rousseau.  And  it  is 
because  they  are  the  ministers  of  God  that  their  interests  are 
at  one  with  those  of  the  people.  For  the  welfare  of  the  state 
is  essentially  an  unity,  which  transcends  the  welfare  of  particu-' 
laFmembers.  Here,  clearly,  he  has  the  opportunity  to  slay  the 
obvious  facts  of  social  hfe  with  the  amazing  abstractness  of 
his  pa§sion_Xor. the  trinity.  Since  the  cause  is  to  the  means  as 
the  means  is  to  the  effect  that  relationship  must  be  discovered 
inpoliticaL  .society,  and,  desiring  its  presence,  he  has  no  diffi- 
culty in  finding  it.  King,  minister,  subject — these  are  the 
obvious  triad  which  gives  supreme  power  to  the  prince."  It 
gives  supreme  power;  and,  for  its  maintenance,  there  is  clearly 
required  hereditary  kingship  on  the  one  hand,  and  hereditary 
nobility  on  the  other.  They  arc  required  because  they  are 
naturally  good.  They  are  natvually . good  because  they  have 
been  tested  by  the  experience  of  time.  They  are  good  because 
without  them  there  would  be  anarchy.  The  absolutism  of  the 
crown  is  essential,  in  fact,  to  the  unity  of  the  state.''*    Society, 


'"  "Observations  sur  I'ouvrage  de  Madame  de  Stael,"  p.  128. 
"  "Legislation  Primitive,"  Bk.  II,  Ch.  iv,  p.  228. 
"  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  Vol.  I,  Bk.  i,  Ch.  ii. 


150        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

like  an  organism,  is  one,  and,  being  one,  it  can  have  only  a  single 
head.  One  man  must  therefore  dominate  lest  all  men  should 
be  destroyed. 

He  can  therefore  reject  that  division  of  powers  which  Mon- 
tesquieu had  postulated  as  the  safeguard  of  hberty.''^^  He  can 
reject  it  for  the  good  reason  that  he  does  not  beUeve  in  hberty. 
He  will,  indeed,  accept  Montesquieu's  dictum  that  power  is 
the  general  will  of  the  state;  but  he  argues  that  the  will  of  the 
sttite  must  necessarily  be  single,  and  that  it  can  aim  at  no  more 
than  self-preservation.  So  to  limit  it  is  to  obviate  the  danger 
that  the  fascinating  questions  discussed  by  Montesquieu 
should  fall  within  the  purview  of  his  thought.  He  reahsed 
clearly  enough  that  Montesquieu  was  entirely  out  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  ancien  regime  and  that  his  speculations  tended 
to  its  dissolution.  He  believed  that  the  separation  of  powers 
was  the  dogma  most  hostile  to  the  unification  of  sovereignty. 
He  saw  that  once  men  were  prepared  to  parcel  it  out  the  result 
must  inevitably  be  an  implicitly  federalised  state.  But  such 
a  political  organisation  tended  to  the  republicanism  which  his 
experience  of  the  Revolution  led  him  to  identify  with  impiety. 
To  separate  powers  was  to  confound  them.  To  separate  pow- 
ers was  to  give  a  handle  to  every  dissident  element  in  the  state. 
When  Louis  XVI  summoned  the  States-General  he  committed 
exactly  this  error;  and  he  paid  the  penalty  with  his  life.  What 
Montesquieu  thus  attempted  was,  in  his  eyes,  the  provision 
of  a  permanent  basis  for  royal  execution  and  he  was  compelled 
to  reject  his  philosophy. 

yThe  fundarnental  tenet  in  his  creed  is  thus  the  nature  he 
ascribes  to  sovereign  power.  He  was  a  worshipper  of  itejinity 
because  the  experience  of  its  opposite  had  been  fatal  to  the 
ideas  he  most  deeply  cherished.  It  can  never  be  too  greatly 
emphasised  that  the  thought  of  Bonald  was  virtually  completed 
in  1796.  There  is  nothing  in  his  last  work  which  is  not,  at 
least  impliedly,  in  his  first.  Neither  the  history  of  the  Napo- 
leonic adventure — after  all,  the  practical  expression  of  his 
attitude — nor  the  tragic  misapprehensions  of  Charles  X  in  any 
wise  altered  his  outlook.  He  cared  for  nothing  save  stability. 
He  naturally  admired  the  environment  of  his  time,  and  he 

"  "Thcorie  du  Pouvoir,"  Bk.  VI,  Ch.  Ill,  p.  411. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         151 

sought  the  conditions  of  its  permanence.     He  conceived  that 
an  unified  absolutism  would  achieve  that  end  because  under 
Louis  XIV  his  ideals  had  found  a  full  expression.    He  believed 
that  there  is  no  remedy  for  disorder  save  uniformity  of  thought. 
Men  had  to  be  kept  in  subjection  because  the  price  of  their 
freedom  was  too  immense.    It  is,  of  course,  a  common  enough 
attitude.    We  have  ourselves,  for  the  most  part,  done  no  more 
than  transfer  from  king  to  state  his  erstwhile  divinity.     The 
king's  need  has  become  raison  d'etat  and  we  have  simply  mul- , 
tiplied  the  basis  of  sovereignty.*''    Bonald  would  have  urged 
the  inherent  error  of  such  a  policy  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
unworkable.     He  saw  in  the  free  expression  of  opinion  the 
conditions  of  misfortune.     Where  men  begin  to  question  he 
could  not  doubt  that  they  begin  also  to  destroy.     For  they 
question  essentially  that  they  may  reconstruct,  and  the  method 
implies  a  period  of  disturbance.    Toleration  is  thus  the  negation  ^ 
of  order. *^    Sovereignty  cannot  be  dispersed  simply  because  it  J 
cannot  then  be  exercised.    To  disperse  it  is  to  make  it  fallible;  ! 
and  the  possibility  of  error  is  the  excuse  for  anarchy. 

This,  indeed,  is  his  generalisation  from  the  experience  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  When  it  questioned  traditional  institu- 
tions it  overthrew  them.*^  Little  by  little  it  exacted  from  the 
crown  the  instruments  of  power.  The  admission  to  political 
privilege  of  the  Hugenots  in  1788  was  the  destruction  of  reli- 
gious uniformity.  The  summons  of  the  States-General  two 
years  later  gave  to  the  unreaUsed  welter  of  accumulated  griev- 
ance the  power  which  translated  it  into  action.  For  the  States- 
General  was  a  human  institution;  and  where  its  advice  was 
neglected,  its  pride  stirred  it  to  compulsion.  Where  before 
order  had  been  possible,  the  doubt  Louis  had  cast  on  his  right 
to  the  full  exercise  of  his  sovereign  power  meant  that  jealous 
men  would  usurp  it.  To  him,  in  fact,  every  event  in  the  Revo- 
lution is  the  logical  result  of  that  single  error.  Once  loosen  the 
strict  bonds  of  power  and  there  is  no  check  to  the  passions  of 

*°  Cf.  the  interesting  little  work  of  M.  L6on  de  Montesquieu,  "Raison 
d'Etat."  This  is,  of  course,  the  whole  basis  of  M.  Duguit's  theories.  See 
especially  his  "Transformations  du  Droit  Public." 

81  "Theorie  du  P.  Religieux,"  Bk.  VI,  Ch.  II. 

"^Cf.  "Pensees  Diverses,"  p.  33. 


152        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

men.  Here,  clearly,  he  feels  like  De  Maistre,  that  the  execu- 
tioner is  the  corner-stone  of  society.  And  he  emphasises  the 
virtues  of  tradition  exactly  for  this  purpose.  Men  cannot 
venerate  what  is  new,  because  where  they  understand  they  are 
sceptical.  But  veneration  is  the  corollary  of  obedience.  The 
unity  of  power  has  behind  it  all  the  overmastering  sense  of 
antiquity.  It  is  the  one  dogma  of  government  which  has^sur- 
vived.  It  is  the  one  dogma  which  has  received  the  continuous 
respect  of  men.  Moreover,  it  alone  is  the  basis  of  solidaritj^ 
The  very  fact  that  there  is  only  one  elevation  to  which  none 
save  the  sovereign  can  pretend  creates  a  common  bond  of 
interest  between  men.  It  sets  outside  the  range  of  ambitious 
exertion  the  hopes  which  may  inspire  social  discontent.  It 
keeps  society  ordered  neatly  in  ranks  and  stations  by  urging 
men  to  fulfil  the  duties  to  which  their  class  and  birth  tradi- 
tionally call  them.  It  suggests  that  necessary  interdepend- 
ence of  function  which  keeps  the  minds  of  men  from  straying 
into  dangerous  paths.  Its  very  neatness  suggests  to  the  major- 
ity a  disharmony  in  novelty  of  outlook.  It  is  thus  a  guarantee 
of  social  peace.  The  king  wills;  and  his  command  is  binding 
upon  every  element  in  the  body  politic.  There  is  thus  generated 
a  perception  of  equality  which  has  all  the  advantages  and  none 
of  the  inherent  dangers  which  a  pluralistic  sovereignty  possesses., 
To  say  that  the  king  is  absolute  sovereign  is  not,  of  course, 
to  postulate  an  arbitrary  tyrant.  Here,  again,  the  origin  of 
his  thought  is  the  speculation  of  Bossuet.  Just  as  the  latter 
was  endeavouring  to  find  a  justification  for  the  absorptiveness 
of  Louis  XIV,  so  was  Bonald  attempting  to  show  that  abso- 
lutism is  not  an  excuse  for  the  accusation  of  arbitrary  power. 
Arbitrary  power  was,  for  him,  a  power  exercised  independently 
of  the  necessary  laws  of  social  organisation.  It  was  the  power 
of  one  who,  like  Napoleon,  sought  his  own  good  and  failed  to 
make  it  coincident  with  the  good  of  France.  Absolute  power 
is  exercised  for  the  benefit  of  the  people.  It  is  the  instrument 
by  which  laws  in  conformity  with  the  will  of  God  are  promul- 
gated. Here,  obviously,  is  a  defence  against  their  degeneration 
into  tyranny.  For  if  the  object  of  absolute  power  is  no  more 
than  the  translation  into  legislative  terms  of  the  will  of  God, 
the  function  of  the  king  is  not  creative  but  declaratory.     He 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE    MODERN    STATE         153 

is  thus  in  no  sense  omnipotent.  He  is  limited  by  the  laws  of 
his  being.  And  he  finds  the  laws  it  is  his  duty  to  declare  not 
by  any  inherent  revelation,  but  by  the  research  of  reason  on 
']Ke  one  hand,  and  by  a  selection  among  existing  institutions 
onThe  other. ''^  The  king  will  continually  exercise  his  mind  on 
the  problem  of  political  organisation.  He  will  search  out  among 
the  achievements  of  men  those  which  have  the  better  contrib- 
uted to  social  improvement.  Here  is  a  source  of  the  wisdom  by 
which  such  a  political  order  may  find  its  justification.  For  since 
this  is  an  order  of  reason  the  people  may  themselves  discover 
the  wisdom  of  its  enactments.  Nor  does  Bonald,  on  the  whole, 
have  any  fear  that  absolutism  may  degenerate.  A  wise  ruler, 
he  urges,  will  immediately  preceive  the  harmony  of  interest  be- 
tween himself  and  his  subjects,  and  his  policy  will  of  necessity 
adjust  itself  to  the  enrichment  of  their  common  purpose.  He 
insists,  moreover,  on  the  importance  of  reahsing  that  the  uni- 
verse  is  teleological.  There  is  behind  it  the  mighty  and  benefi- 
cent  purpose  of  its  maker.  To  that  all  institutions  and  all  men 
are^  in  tne  end,  subordinate.  So  that  ultimately  good  may  be 
expected  even  from  bad  institutions.  Social  defect  is  self-cura- 
tiveTy  the  inspiration  it  affords  to  a  reaction  from  its  errors. 
Nor  does  the  king  stand  alone.  It  must  never  be  forgotten  that 
there  exists  the  ministerial  body  through  which  the  king  acts. 
He  has  the  benefit  of  their  advice  and  of  their  criticism.  They 
can  warn  him  of  impending  dangers.  They  can  urge  him  against 
unwise  courses.  Society  has  thus  given  itself  an  admirable 
and  self-regulating  check  against  kingly  error.^^ 

Not  that,  in  any  case,  kingly  error  would  justify  deposition.^* 
The  good  Bonald  glows  with  passionate  indignation  at  the 
mere  thought  of  its  possibility.  If  our  king  is  a  bad  king  we 
must  endure  him.  An  attitude  of  hopeful  resignation  is  alone 
possible  to  Christians.  For  to  admit  the  rectitude  of  deposi- 
tion is  to  admit  the  justice  of  social  scepticism.  It  is  to  admit 
a  virtue  to  that  which  destroys.    It  is  to  give  to  jealous  men  the 

83  "Essai  sur  I'ordre  social,"  p.  65. 
8<  "Principe  Constitutif,"  Ch.  X,  p.  465. 

85  "Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  Bk.  I,  Ch.  IX.  Cf.  Bossuet,  op.  cit.,  Bk. 
VI,  1  and  2. 

8«  "Principe  Constitutif,"  Ch.  XI,  p.  468. 


154        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

hope  of  a  share  in  power  by  enabling  them  to  misrepresent 
motive  and  achievement  for  their  own  base  purposes.  The  in- 
stitution  of  kingship  is  divine,  and  to  allow  men  to  question 
it  is  to  allow  them  to  doubt  the  work  of  God.  It  is  this  whicu 
makes  him  insist  also  on  the  necessity  of  hereditary  monarchy. 
Where  the  succession  to  the  throne  is  at  the  outset  guaranteed, 
we  have  an  assurance  of  stability.  We  have  that  foreknowl- 
edge of  events  which  is  a  safeguard  against  interested  schemers. 
Not  only  is  primogeniture  natural — how  othermse  could  it  be 
of  so  marvellous  an  antiquity — but  it  is  a  vital  assurance  of 
continuity  in  national  life.  To  deny  it  is  to  admit  the  roots  of 
division  within  the  state.  He  reasonably  points  to  Poland  as 
an  instance  of  the  paralysis  which  results  from  an  elective 
system.^^  There,  power  has  been  in  fact  divided  and  the  fate 
of  Poland  is  the  measure  of  its  error.  There  is  no  surety  for 
existence  without  integration.  To  establish  beforehand  the 
natural  order  of  events  is  clearly  to  minimise  the  dangers  of 
transition. 

The  whole  purpose  of  these  elaborate  safeguards  is  obvious 
enough.  Bonald  has  been  impressed  by  the  diverse  aims  the 
will  of  man  can  encompass,  and  he  searches  the  means  to  mini- 
mise the  disharmony  of  their  interplay.  That  which  he  most 
greatly  fears  is  the  influence  of  unorthodox  opinion. ^^  He 
regarded  democracy  as  per  se  an  effort  after  political  defiance 
which  seeks  to  transfer  power  to  itself.  But  the  weapon  of 
democracy  is  discussion  and  from  discussion  is  born  intellecr^ 
tual  perversity.  "Avec  des  mots,"  he  wrote,^  "on  pervertira 
la  raison  des  peuples;"  and  propaganda  he  thus  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  brand  as  sin.  He  denied,^^  indeed,  that  the  influence 
of  the  press  can  secure  the  passage  of  great  measures.  For  not 
only  do  they  consistently  misinterpret  a  public  opinion  that  they 
do  not  understand,  but  they  serve  only  to  darken  counsel  and 
so  to  hinder  action.  A  censorship  of  the  press  is  thus  a  necessity 
that  power  may  have  adequate  protection.^"  Only  in  this  way 
can  inen  of  evil  disposition  be  prevented  from  attacking  every 

^'  "De  la  liberty  de  la  presse,"  p.  3. 

88  Ibid.,  p.  13. 

89  Ibid.,  p.  16. 

90  Ibid.,  p.  29. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN    STATE         155 

necessary  institution  of  society.  "Ces  jeunes  anonymes,"  he 
wrote  scornfully ,^^  ....  exploitent  a  leur  profit,  et  comme 
una  Industrie  ou  une  propriete  patrimoniale  la  religion,  le  gouv- 
ernement,  les  lois,  1' administration."  They  erect  their  private 
opinion  into  the  will  of  the  state  and  are  tFus  the  very  harbin- 
gers of  revolution.  Control  of  opinion  is  then  no  more  than  the 
paternal  regard  of  the  Crown  for  the  welfare  of  its  subjects. 
It  has  had  brilliant  results  and  antagonism  to  it  he  ascribes  to 
the  insensate  pride  of  malicious  spirits.  Nor  does  he  doubt^^ 
that  all  liberty  is  in  fact  simply  the  concession  of  instituted 
power  which  may  set  the  terms  of  reason  to  its  benevolence. 
To  him^^  the  whole  demand  for  the  right  of  discussion  under 
the  Restoration  was  simply  the  inevitable  consequence  of  that 
representative  government  instituted  by  the  Charter  of  1814. 
For,  as  he  urges,^^  the  result  of  that  measure  is  to  inaugurate 
a  rivalry  between  royalty  and  the  populace  for  power.  It  is 
an  endeavour  of  the  other  to  usurp  what  it  has  no  right  to  re- 
tain. It  has  a  tragic  outcome.  It  results  in  the  creation  of  two 
powers  and  hence  of  two  societies.  They  cannot  live  in  tran- 
quillity within  the  same  state,  and  the  disturbance  from  which 
France  suffers  is  the  effect  of  their  collision.  He  looks  back 
regretfully^^  to  the  times  of  the  Grand  Monarch  when  unity  of 
political  outlook  was  the  first  law  of  life.  He  mentions^^  with 
the  tenderness  of  affectionate  agreement  the  custom  of  the 
Roman  Senate  which  was  wont  to  banish  those  philosophers 
whose  theories  threatened  the  harmony  of  the  state.  They 
reahsed  the  fundamental  truth  he  is  here  concerned  to  incul- 
cate^'' that  society  perishes  not  by  the  absence  of  truth — that 
is_at  the  basis  of  social  existence — but  by  the  presence  of  error. 
The  nourishment  of  man  is  his  ideas,  and  to  allow  him  free 
access  to  a  food  that  has  not  been  examined  is  to  run  the  risk 
of  social  poisoning.^^    "Un  ecrit  dangereux,"  he  declared  with 

"  Ibid.,  p.  44. 

^Uhid.,  p.  61. 

^^  Ibid.,  p.  117. 

^*  Ibid.,  p.  137. 

S6  Ibid.,  p.  142. 

86  Ibid.,  p.  143. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  148. 

9«  Ibid.,  p.  156. 


156        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

passion,^^  "est  une  declaration  de  guerre  a   toute  I'Europe;" 
and  it  was  no  more  than  an  obvious  duty  to  suppress  it. 

Freedom  is  thus  a  dangerous  chimera  and  remedies  against 
its  pursuit  must  be  found.  It  is  for  a  return  to  the  ancient  ways 
that  he  is  most  deeply  concerned.  The  misfortunes  of  France 
have  come  because  her  king  abandoned  the  natural  path  of 
royalty.^""  They  bowed  before  the  erection  of  a  system  and 
the  consequence  is  their  submission  to  its  continuous  examina- 
tion. Such  an  endeavor  to  reduce  to  written  form  the  elements 
of  social  life  seems  to  him  profoundly  erroneous.  Popularisa- 
tion he  always  held  as  a  grave  danger  for  it  prevented  the 
unification  of  opinion.  To  write  out  the  basis  of  government 
is  to  defeat  the  end  for  which  it  was  made.  Trouble  is  the 
eldest  child  of  knowledge.  He  puts  his  trust  rather  in  a  decent 
mystery  which  alone  makes  possible  an  adequate  veneration. 
To  write  the  constitution  is  to  tempt  the  passions  of  men. 
It  is  to  suggest  that  there  are  limits  to  the  royal  power.  It  is 
to  tell  the  people  that  certain  rights  are  theirs  by  nature  and 
they  will  have  no  sense  of  proportion  in  their  demands.  For 
royalty  he  demands  an  invisibility  and  an  omnipresence.^^^  In 
business  and  pleasure  alike  the  ways  of  kings  must  be  mysteri- 
ous and  hidden.  Bonald  even  blames  lightly  the  action  of 
Louis  XIV  in  appearing  publicly  at  the  fetes  of  Versailles; 
while  he  is  certain  that  the  raillery  of  Marie-Antoinette  made 
the  pleasures  of  the  Court  insupportable  to  the  mass  of  men. 
The  king  must  try^"^  adequately  to  mirror  the  divinity  of  which 
he  is  an  image.  He  must  be  simple,  severe,  dignified.  His 
nobility  must  cease^"^  that  vain  pursuit  of  titles  which  incites 
jealousy  without  invoking  respect.  It  must  instead  set  itself 
to  the  creation  of  a  reverence  for  the  solemn  fact  of  power.^"^ 
Unless  that  is  done,  the  destroying  angel  of  envy  will  cast  its 
baneful  influence  over  France.  But  to  this  end  one  means  alone 
is  at  all  adequate  and  effective. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  157. 

i""  "De  la  Justice  Divine,"  p.  132. 

'"  Ibid.,  p.  145. 

"2  Ibid. 

'"'  Ibid.,  p.  149. 

'"^  Ibid.,  p.  150. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         157 

VI.    THE  RELIGIOUS  ASPECT  OF  THE  STATE 

Religious  passion  was  the  supreme  influence  of  Bonald's  life. 
Only  in  its  acceptance  could  he  see  that  elevation  of  heart  and 
loftiness  of  spirit  which  are  the  basic  conditions  of  progress.^''^ 
The  people  that  respects  religion  is  a  happy  people,  for  it  is 
certain  to  respect  authority.  Religion  he  believed  to  be  essen- 
tial to  the  intellectual  satisfaction  of  man,  for  otherwise  its 
universahty  was  inexplicable.^"^  Only  by  reason  of  the  assump- 
tiwis  it  makes  can  the  world  be  understood.  Even  Rousseau 
admitted  it  to  be  essential  ;^''^  and  Bonald  seeks  no  further 
justification.  When  the  devil  admits  the  worth  of  right,  good 
men  have  no  more  duty  than  its  translation  into  action. 

ReHgion  for  him  was  the  basis  of  political  stability.  It  helps 
the  statesman  by  its  insistence  on  moral  ideas.  It  gives  birth 
to  a  standard  of  conduct.  It  gives  a  definite  context  to  the 
vague  ideas  of  rfglit  and  wrong  which  results  in  a  test  of  action. 
It  creates  justice  by  its  emphasis  on  the  necessity  of  applying 
lis  standard  to  the  facts  of  fife.  This  a  priori  test.  in(^(;;g(l,  hft 
deems  the  most  valuable  preservative  of  JJie^ social  order.  For 
when  one  deals  in  a  mystic  absolute  the  time  for  discussion  has 
passed.  We  cannot  waste  our  time  in  argument  against  the 
decrees  of  God;  and  it  is  their  support  that  Bonald  brings  to 
his  ideal  of  the  state.  He  brings  it  because  his  order  is  divinely 
ordained  and  he  desires  the  sanction  of  God  for  his  canons  of 
political  wisdom.  He  does  not,  of  course,  lack  texts  to  prove 
his  point;  but  his  scholasticism  is  more  profovmd  than  the  su- 
perficial casuistry  of  quotation.  He  is  satisfied  that  no  good 
man  can  be  without  religion.  He  looks  upon  religion  as  the 
sole  sanction  of  moral  activity.  Clearly,  therefore,  he  must 
make  religion  interchangeable  with  politics.  What  in  society 
man  above  all  needs  is  that  which  will  enable  him  to  bear  the 
burden  of  life.  His  troubles  are  so  vast  and  so  manifold,  that 
consolation  is  essential  if  he  is  to  find  them  supportable.  Only 
religion  can  assuage  his  cares.  It  softens  the  disharmonies"^ 
social  existence  by  dircctinti  the  interests  of  men  rather  to  the 
life  that  is  to  come  than  to  the  life  that  is.    It  gives  to  politics 

^'Ihi'l.,  p.  155. 

106  '<Theorie  du  Pouvoir,"  I,  VI. 

107  Ibid.,  I,  IV. 


158        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

the  basis  of  a  necessary  mythopoiesis.  It  acts,  in  fact,  as  a 
social  chloroform  to  dull  the  hearts  of  men  against  the  pain 
of  truth.  It  is  the  justification  of  the  present  by  its  reference 
to  a  divine  past.    So  is  it  a  preventive  against  discontent. 

Religion,  of  course,  means  the  Roman  Catholic  religion. 
Protestantism,  by  its  very  definition,  is  fatal  to  these  mighty 
purposes.  It  is  out  of  accord  with  the  realities  of  sovereignty. 
Lutheran  ideals  beget  oligarchy,  and  Calvinism  the  govern- 
ment of  Geneva.  Each,  in  fact,  destroys  the  unity  which  is 
the  essence  of  a  monarchic  system.  Such  forms  of  faith  are 
for  him  comparable  only  to  that  pleasant  feeling  of  internal 
satisfaction  which  Rousseau  mistook  for  rehgion.  Its  true 
basis  is  the  fundamental  fact  of  sacrifice.^"^  Its  true  basis  is 
the  tacit  acceptance  of  your  environment  even  though  that 
acceptance  give  pain.  Religion  is  thus  pre-eminently  social, 
for  the  necessity  of  sacrifice  is  born  from  the  fact  of  society. 

The  object  of  religion  is  clearly  to  repress  the  evil  and  indi' 
vidualist  passions  of  men,  to  make  them  capable  thereby  of 
social  existence.  Only  the  Catholic  faith  can  do  this  at  all 
adequately  because  only  the  Catholic  faith  is  truly  one.  It 
insists  on  the  repression  of  the  individual  will.  It  has  only  a 
single  sovereign,  since  that  which  the  pope  commands  is  at 
once  universal  law.  Obedience  to  his  command  is  the  basis  of 
membership  of  his  church.  So  that  Catholicism  does  not  follow 
the  fatal  path  of  Luther  and  of  Calvin.  It  forbids  man  to 
think  for  himself.  It  prescribes  the  belief  he  may  alone  ac- 
cept. It  thus  secures  within  itself  the  constant  exercise  of  that 
general  will  of  which  the  operation  is  the  condition  of  social 
permanence.  Religion,  for  Bonald,  is  thus  a  training  in  social 
conduct.  It  is  the  great  defender  of  society.  By  teaching 
men  resignation,  by  preventing  them  from  following  the  will 
o'  the  wisp  of  their  private  intellectual  whim,  it  safeguards  the 
maintenance  of  principle.  It  thus  interacts  with  the  state. 
There  is  very  clearly  a  joint  relation  between  two  institutions 
so  obviously  complementary  in  character.  Civilised  society, 
indeed,  is  simply  religion  in  its  political  aspect.  It  is  religion 
considered  in  its  human  emphasis. 

If  that  is  true,  then  Bonald  cannot  doubt  that  religion  must 

"8  "Thdorie  du  Pouvoir,"  II,  Bk.  I,  Ch.  II,  p.  22. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         159 


be  the  guiding  factor  in  the  state.^^^  Religion  has  given  to  the 
state  the  assistance  which  makes  its~Iife~po^bre]  Religion 
must  then  be  restored  to  its  erstwhile  sovereignty  over  men. 
The  chief  cause  of  political  decay  is  the  contempt  which  evil 
men  have  poured  upon  it  for  their  own  base  purposes.  The 
obvious  policy  of  enlightened  government  is  to  restore  it  to 
the  fullness  of  its  power.^^"  Such  a  restoration  would  posit  as 
axiomatic  the  principles  of  his  faith.  Education  would  minis- 
ter to  its  needs.  It  would  preach  the  gospel  of  duty  and  therein 
find  the  sanction  of  tradition.  It  is  Catholicism  alone,  in  fact, 
which  has  the  sure  proof  of  excellence  which  comes  from  anti- 
quity. It  alone  has  preached  an  unchanging  social  doctrine. 
To  ensure  its  dominance  is  to  give  to  France  the  religion  most 
in  accord  with  her  history.  Tradition  associates  French  glory 
with_Catholic  success  and  its  rehabilitation  would  give  to  the 
throne  the  proud  weight  of  its  incomparable  power. 

He  would  go  even  further.    He  would  not  permit  the  exist- 
ence ofjnore  than  one  religion  in  a  country.     So  to  do  is  to 
destroy  the  fundamental  unity  which  Catholicism  predicates. 
Without  identity  of  belief  the  gate  is  open  for  civil  war;    but 
where  men  think  alike  the  tragedy  of  dissident  action  is  im- 
possible.   Intolerance  is  thus  essential  to  his  outlook,  and,  like 
Lamennais  in  the  earlier  phase  of  his  thought,  he  saw  no  dis- 
tinction between  toleration  and  indifference.     To  allow  the 
preaching  of  other  faiths  was  for  him  only  to  proclaim  that 
you  are  uncertain  of  the  truth  about  your  own.    Men  tolerate 
only  where  they  do  not  love.     Those  who  have  firm  hold  of 
CathoHc  truth  know  that  its  alternative  is  unthinkable.     For 
once' Protestantism  is  given  a  foothold,  it  treads  the  primrose 
path  to  anarchy.    Men  cease  then  to  believe  in  the  necessity 
of  sacrifice,  and  the  vaunting  pride  of  jealous  ambition  strikes 
a  fatal  blow  at  the  solidarity  of  the  political  fabric.    Only  in- 
tolerance, in  fact,  makes  possible  the  "philosophie  de  nous" 
with  which  he  proposed  to  replace  the  egocentric  creed  of  Vol- 
taire and  of  Rousseau.^"    In  this  aspect,  of  course,  nothing  was 
less  wise  than  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  nothing  more  politic  than 

"9  "Leg.  Prim.,"  II,  115. 

"0  Ibid.,  i,  180. 

"1  "Oeuvres,"  XII,  65. 


160        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

its  reversal.  For  the  edict  split  the  French  state  into  two  irrec- 
oncilable halves  and  destroyed  the  unity  of  power.  RicheUeu's 
attention  was  diverted  from  the  necessities  of  foreign  war 
simply  because  he  could  not  depend  on  the  support  of  the 
people.  The  seed  of  opposition  had  been  planted  and  La  Ro- 
chelle  was  its  harvesting. 

He  has  thus  a  simple  and  mechanical  view  of  the  interaction 
between  religion  and  poHtics.  "Quand  il  (le  pouvoir)  manque 
d'un  cote"  he  wrote,"^  "[\  en  faut  d'avantage  d'un  autre."  Re- 
lax the  bonds  of  religious  discipline  and  he  did  not  doubt  that 
the  result  would  be  written  in  the  records  of  crime.  And 
religion  is  the  real  basis  of  all  because  it  gives  the  sentiment  to 
men  upon  which  their  fortitude  is  founded.  It  bids  them  do 
their  duty,  where,  otherwise,  they  would  not  hesitate  to  act 
from  motives  of  self-interest.  It  thus  draws  men's  minds  to  the 
great  end.  It  insists  on  their  social  context.  It  points  to  unity 
as  the  plain  object  of  their  endeavour.  It  is  favourable  to 
monarchy  by  that  very  reason.  But  unity  is  always  in  dan- 
ger^of  attack  from  mahcious  ambition.  That  is  why  liberty . 
of  thought,  no  less  in  pohtics  than  in  religion,  must  be  re- 
strained."^ The  really  intelligent  man  is  he  who  knows  that 
what  he  preaches  is  so  supremely  important  that  he  will  per- 
mit no  divergence  from  his  opinion.  Enlightenment  for  him 
is  only  the  subjective  aspect  of  intolerance,  and  Bonald  did 
not  doubt  that  he  was  enlightened.  And  because  he  thought 
government  as  necessary  as  food,"*  he  welcomed  religion  as  a 
means  of  stimulation  where  the  appetite  might  otherwise  be 
lacking.  The  Catholic  religion  became  in  this  aspect  the  more 
vital  since  it  alone  insisted .  that  the  source  of  nourishment 
must  be  single.  So  convinced  was  he  of  the  virtue  of  the  unity 
it  so  rigidly  prescribed  that  he  found  the  sovereign  safeguard 
of  civilisation  in  the  return  of  Protestants  to  the  Catholic 
fold."^  Otherwise,  it  was  clear,  the  power  of  the  world  would 
continue  to  be  divided.  But  power  was  to  be  compared  to  a 
seamless  tunic  which  cannot  be  torn  asunder."'' 

"-  "Pensees  Diverses,"  p.  33. 

'"  "Oeuvres,"  X,  258. 

"^  "Pensees  Diverses,"  p.  12. 

"5  "Oeuvres,"  X,  296. 

•'"  "Oeuvres,"  XI,  121. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         161 

Very  clearly,  what  he  was  eag(M-  to  discover  was  the  sover- 
eign  remedy  ap:ainst  thought.  lie  welcomed  the  Catholic 
reirgibii  sitniily  because  it  rendered  all  speculation  a  superfluity. 
It  asked  men  only  to  believe  and  it  named  faith  the  proudest 
of  the  virtues.  He  genuinely  feared  the  declaration  of  prin- 
ciples_iounded_upon_  intelligent  enquiry.  To^  give  privileges 
was  to  admit  rights  and  to  admit  rights  was  to  extend  them. 
So  that  once  reason  was  set  to  work  there  was  an  end  to  the 
stability  of  the  state.  The  religion  that  made  of  reason  an 
unnecessary  luxury  was  thus  naturally  in  accord  with  his 
temper.  "Le  seul  allie,"  he  wrote,"^  "dont  la  France  ait  le 
desir  et  le  besoin  (est)  le  pouvoir."  But,  for  Bonald,  _to-put 
one's  trust  in  God  was  to  accept  the  existing  world  as  necessarily 
perfect  because  it  was  the  divine  handiwork.  To  preach  Cathol- 
icism was  thus  to  steel  men's  hearts  against  thought  and,  as  a 
consequence,  to  turn  them  away  from  revolution.  Wisdom 
and  religion  became  thus  politically  interchangeable  terms. 
The  only  charter  necessary  to  a  well-constructed  state  was  the 
charter  of  religious  enthusiasm.  It  makes  a  people  prosperous 
and  happy,  above  all,  it  makes  them  contented  and  peaceful. 
The  one  object  of  the  state  must  then  be  its  promotion.  The 
government  which  has  not  learned  this  lesson Is^atfeady  doomed, 
and  has  become  the  accomplice  in  its  own  destruction. ^^^  But 
a  state  that  is  wedded  to  religion  has  discovered  the  secret  of 
permanence.  It  has  destroyed  all  doubt  of  itself.  It  has  at- 
tached  to  its  existence  the  emotion  of  necessity.  It  has  woven 
itself  into  the  stuff  of  other  men's  lives. 

VII.  CRITICISMS 

To  jmch  an  attitude  the  Revolution  of  1830  suppHed  the  only 
possible  answer.  But  it  supplied  an  answer~which,  apart  from 
iTs  possibihty,  was  at  the  same  time  decisive.  For  it  showed 
clearly  enough  that  whatever  the  Revolution  of  1789  had  failed 
to  achieve^it  had  at  arlS^-Tate^  made  men  out  of  temper  with 
despoHsm.  The  monarchy  of  the  Restoration  had  not  con- 
cealed  its  sympathy  with  Bonald's  ideas.  The  spasmodic  at- 
tempts it  had  made  after  the  pale  ghost  of  an  attenuated  lib- 

11'  "La  Justice  Divine,"  p.  XIII. 
"8  Ibid.,  22. 


162        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

eralism  did  not  in  any  way  destroy  its  essential  continuity 
with  the  ancien  regime.  It  even  butchered  the  Charter  to  make 
a  theocratic  holiday  and  the  men  of  Paris  turned  once  more 
Ughtly  to  their  barricades.  For  it  is  useless  to  answer  unreason 
with  reason.  A  spiritual  prejudice  can  only  be  eradicated  by 
the  spectacle  of  passionate  events.  That  which  it  attacks  is 
the  very  basis  of  all  that  cannot  be  harmonised  with  its  dogma 
and  to  the  protests  of  the  spirit  the  spirit  alone  can  fling  its 
ringing  reply. 

The  detailed  criticism  of  Bonald's  ideas,  in  fact,  would  be 
an  useless  task.  What  he  represents  is  not  a  system  but  an 
attitude.  What  he  represents  is  the  intellectuaUsm  of  vivid 
emotions  realised  in  a  fashion  peculiarly  intimate  and  keen. 
He  could  never  change  his  principles,  and,  indeed,  he  made 
proud  boast  that  the  world  of  pohtics  is  a  changeless  world 
which  knows  neither  spring  nor  autumn."^  His  temperament 
was  too  unyielding  to  permit  him  the  understanding  of  politi- 
cal philosophy.  His  mind  was  tragically  inflexible.  One  who 
could  see  the  Revolution  and  the  Restoration  unmoved  was 
assuredly  not  created  for  the  tasks  of  statesmanship.  Sainte- 
Beuve,  in  an  illuminating  passage,^^°  has  compared  him  to  a 
Roman  of  the  ancient  time,  and  the  analogy  explains  much. 
For  what  fundamentally  interested  Bonald  was  character  and 
by  character  he  meant  the  strength  to  accept  a  given  environ- 
ment. His  life  was  an  unceasing  protest  against  any  effort 
after  change.  The  meaning  of  intellectual  or  moral  aspiration 
was  unknown  to  him.  All  he  could  do  was  to  postulate  his 
principles  and  he  attained  them  by  the  hypostatisation  of  his 
public  passions.  The  man  who  could  honestly  believe  that  the 
exile  of  the  Bourbon  was  God's  punishment^^^  on  France  for 
its  national  sin  was  assuredly  unfitted  to  cope  with  the  practical 
questions  of  so  sensitive  a  time.  He  did  not  realise  that  the 
Revolution  had  marked  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  man.  Be- 
cause he  was  able  to  blot  it  out  of  his  thought  and  go  back  to 
the  golden  days  of  Louis  XIV  he  imagined  that  others,  too 
would  forget.    That  they  would  choose  to  remember  seems  never 

»'»  "Pensdes  Diverses,"  p.  29. 
'"  "Causeries,"  IV,  330. 
1"  "Pensdes,"  p.  172. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         163 

to  have  entered  his  mind.  That  Rousseau  might  in  fact  have 
been  more  than  a  poetic  will  o'  the  wisp  who  spent  fine  phrases 
on  inadequate  thought  he  would  not  for  one  moment  con- 
template. The  Revolution  attacked  the  fundamental  preju- 
dices of  his  heart — religion  and  kingship — and  all  with  which  it 
was  connected  he  came  to  regard  as  tainted  at  its  source.  He 
had,  in  any  case,  a_narrow  and  unyielding  mind.  His  letters 
re^al  the  courteous  pedant  who  goos  through  life  like  a  foot- 
man  "at  a  courtTuQdJDn.  For  it  must  be  admitted  that  there 
is  sometmngof  the  servitor  in  Ronald's  nature.  Honest,  in- 
corruptible, earnest — all  these  he  may  have  been.  No  one  can 
doubt  that  he  felt  deeply  and  had  pondered  much  on  the 
fundamental  questions.  Rut  he  was  too  easily  content  with 
the  life  he  found  to  have  the  courage  to  examine  its  rectitude. 
He  mistook  his  country  estate  for  the  Garden  of  Eden  and  the 
Revolution  seemed  to  him  Httle  less  than  the  expulsion  from 
Paradise.  He  had  been  schooled  severely  by  church  and  state. 
The  pupil  of  the  Oratorians  and  the  royal  guard  never  forgot 
the  training  he  had  received.  Everything  he  wrote  was  con- 
ceived m  fuirdress  and  wears  the  air  of  having  been  written  in 
the  ante-room  of  a  royal  levee.  He  has  none  of  the  light  touch 
of  de  Maistre  so  that  his  words,  if  they  are  sharp,  are  not  yet 
wipged.^^^  There  are  few  instances  in  the  history  of  political 
ideas  of  so  able  a  man  being  so  completely  deceived  as  to  the 
character  of  his  age.  He  differs  from  de  Maistre  in  that  the 
latter,  as  his  pessimism  revealed,  was  essentially  hurling  a  pro- 
test at  a  tiling  for  which  he  could  feel  nothing  save  hate.  Rut 
Ronald  is  optimistic,  and  if  he  does  not  spare  the  Revolution 
he  has  no  doubt  whatever  of  the  curative  effect  of  his  remedies. 
His  simplicity,  in  fact,  is  the  sole  cause  of  his  charm.  That 
he  was  proposing  the  bitterness  of  despotism  to  a  people  which 
had  enjoyed  the  fruit  of  liberty  he  seems  in  nowise  to  have 
realised.  It  did  not  in  the  least  move  him  that  the  men  he 
attacked  should  have  written  books  which  commanded  the 
profound  respect  of  able  men.  He  had  so_  childlike  a  faith  in 
the  nobility  of  his  cause  that  he  did  not  hesitate  to  ascribe 
disagreement  to  maUcious  egoism.  He  did  not  see  that  his 
kiiig  and  Tils  God  could  no  longer  exert  the  old  fascination. 

"2  Sainte-Beuve,  "Causeries,"  IV,  330. 


164        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

He  did  not  see  that  a  dynasty  which  had  mounted  the  scaffold 
lost  thereon  the  secret  of  its  superiority,  that  a  Pope  who  had 
suffered  imprisonment  thereby  proclaimed  his  desertion  by  the 
God  of  whom  he  was  the  appointed  vicar.  The  old  watchwords 
had  lost  their  magic.  They  had  been  dulled  into  argument  and 
they  could  not  justify  themselves  by  debate.  Whatever  it 
had  failed  to  achieve,  the  Revolution  had  taught  men  the 
splendour  of  speculation.  It  had  become  an  impossible  tasf 
to  preach  that  thought  was  disease. 

It  is  true  that  Bonald  had  the  past  on  his  side.  It  is  true  that 
the  experiment  against  which  he  so  passionately  inveighed  had 
all  the  danger  of  novelty.  But  because  he  clung  so  tenaciously 
to  his  traditions  he  shut  himself  off  from  the  future.  What 
in  hard  fact  he  was  demanding  was  simply  that  the  systemwhich 
satisfied  his  emotions  should  be  the  accepted  method  of  gov- 
ernment. What  he  entirely  failed  to  perceive  was  the  still 
more  indubitable  fact  that  the  majority  of  thinking  men  in 
France  were  dissatisfied  with  that  system.  It  seems.  never_to 
have  entered  his  mind  that  there  might  have  been  cause  for 
the  Revolution.  If  Taine  condemned  it  no  less  wholeheartedly, 
he  had  at  any  rate  adventured  some  sort  of  exami nation. ^^3 
It  is  not  necessary  to  etherealise  the  Revolution  like  Michelet 
to  perceive  how  inevitably  it  is  the  consequence  of  the  system 
for  which  Bonald  stood  sponsor.  He  saw  that  system  given  a 
second  trial;  and  he  did  not  in  the  least  understand  how  tragic- 
ally it  repeated  its  old  errors.  The  simple  truth  is  that  with 
the  march  of  mind  absolute  government  is  necessarily  anachro- 
nistic. The  will  of  man  is  an  individual  will;  and  it  sweeps 
into  the  general  will  only  to  the  point  where  the  degree  of 
fusion  makes  possible  a  social  existence.  But  even  while  it 
accepts  it  questions  and  by  its  doubts  it  dissolves.  So  that, 
in  any  final  analysis,  democratic  government  is  the  only  prac- 
tical government  simply  because  it  is  only  in  a  democracy  that 
an  individual  will  can  safeguard  its  reserves.^^'* 

'2'  I  say  "some  sort"  because  after  M.  Aulard's  relentless  examination 
in  his  "Taine,  Historien  de  la  R6volution  Fran^aise"  it  is  impossible  to 
have  any  confidence  in  Taine's  authority. 

'"  This  has  been  brilliantly  asserted  in  Lord  Morley's  "Notes  on  Politics 
and  History." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         165 

No  man,  in  fact,  will  live  a  life  ordered  for  him  from  without 
unless  the  state  of  which  he  is  part  has  accepted  a  swine-phil- 
osophy. It  has  beatified  order  at  the  expense  of  thought.  It 
has  endeavoured  to  give  men  the  minimum  basis  of  material 
satisfaction  and  dignified  their  acquiescence  by  the  name  of 
citizenship.  But  that  is  not  merely  a  stunted  ideal;  it  is  also 
an  impossible  experience.  A  state  may  have  every  perquisite 
of  sovereign  power.  It  is  yet  the  clear  lesson  no  less  of  history 
than  of  philosophy  that  the  basis  of  sovereignty  is  the  opinion 
of  men.  That  was  why,  in  the  end,  even  the  emperor  of  the 
great  Roman  kingdom  came  to  depend  upon  the  chance  whim 
of  his  obscure  soldiery.  That  was  why,  also,  the  word  of  an 
unknown  monk  commanded  a  respect  and  exerted  an  influence 
which  shook  to  its  foundations  the  proud  edifice  of  papal  power. 
Continuous  order  is  the  expression  less  of  peace  than  of  death. 
The  Pax  Romana  was  less  the  measure  of  civilisation  than  of 
sterility;  and  there  came  a  time  when  men  exercised  their 
right  to  pick  and  choose  among  its  benefits.  What  every 
unique  sovereignty  will  sooner  or  later  attempt  is  the  control 
of  mind.  Yet  it  is  equally  certain  that  sooner  or  later  it  will 
exert  its  effort  after  control  by  the  material  pacification  of 
men.  But  liberty  has  her  compensations;  and  the  result  of 
that  very  pacification  is  the  stimulus  to  intellectual  effort.  The 
men  who  have  been  fed  into  peace  are  nourished  into  exami- 
nation.   The  offspring  of  food  is  revolution. 

Bonald  made  the  mistake  which  has  been  fatal  to  every 
systemof  politics  thus  far  in  history:  he  took  no  account  of  the 
progress  of  mind.  He  assumed  an  abstract  man  and  confounded 
him  with  men. ^^^  It  is  a  mistake  as  easy  as  it  is  disastrous;  for 
eveiy^abstract  creation  becomes  its  creator's  Frankenstein. 
Men  somehow  refuse  to  accept  the  categories  in  which  philoso- 
phers would  chain  them.  Their  world,  whether  for  good  or 
evil,  is  a  dynamic  world;  and  they  accept  no  moment  in  history 
as  its  apogee.  But  the  result  of  such  kinesis  is  clearly  to  make 
every  political  ideal  adequate  only  for  the  moment  when  it  is 
formulated,  insofar  as  it  is  a  system  which  claims  a  practical 
application.    And  because  men  are  various  they  move  in  varied 

'2^  That  is  to  say  that  the  effort  to  depict  him  as  a  realist  is  without 
basis  in  fact. 


166        AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

direction.  Their  effort  is  different  and  their  interpretations  of 
life  refuse  reduction  to  a  single  scheme.  The  result  is  to  demand 
a  system  of  government  of  which  the  essential  condition  is  the 
distribution  of  power.  Political  good  refuses  the  s\v£Lddling- 
clothes  of  finality  and  becomes  a  shifting  conception.  It  can 
not  be  hcgelianised  into  a  permanent  compromise.  It  asks  the 
validation  of  men  and  actions  in  terms  of  historical  experience. 
For  whatever  history  is  not,  the  ancients  were  right  when  they 
insisted  that  it  is  philosophy  by  example.  And  since  each  age 
has  different  memories,  there  is  no  constancy  of  form  or  sub- 
stance possible  over,  at  any  rate,  long  periods  of  time.  Every- 
thing that  is  systematised  becomes  a  category  that  is  capable  of 
decay.  The  peasant  of  Norman  England  who  saw  himself 
bound  to  the  soil  assuredly  did  not  dream  that  one  day  there 
would  be  an  England  wherein  the  law  would  know  neither  bond 
nor  slave;  yet  we  who  analyse  the  course  of  those  events  in 
which  he  played  a  part  recognise  the  inevitability  of  the  process. 
The  king's  will  is  law  only  so  far  as  men  will  consent  to  its  exer- 
cise. The  king's  will  is  law  in  the  France  of  the  ancien  regime] 
but  those  men  who  in  the  summer  days  of  1789  gathered  in  the 
tennis-court  of  Versailles  knew  how  lightly  a  monistic  sover- 
eignty is  founded.  Bonald  may  have  been  right  in  his  contempt 
for  all  who  were  not  of  his  order;  he  may  have  ground  for  his 
worship  of  Bourbon  kings.  The  church  in  which  alone  he  be- 
lieved salvation  to  be  found  may  in  fact  have  possessed  an 
exclusive  right  to  its  conference.  Yet  the  world  believed  none 
of  these  things,  and  because  it  disbelieved,  his  theory  of  the 
state  was  no  more  than  the  emptiest  of  dreams.  His  social 
philosophy  drew  its  importance  from  the  fact  that  it  summed 
up  a  vital  epoch  in  the  history  of  government.  It  explains,^ 
even  if  it  does  not  justify,  the  effort  of  the  Revolution.  It" 
makes  intelligible  the  watchwords  and  the  achievement  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  It  shows  why  men  had  ceased  to  be  satis- 
fied with  the  formula3  of  absolutism.  For  it  is  at  war  with  every 
permanent  reality  of  human  life. 

VIII.    THE  REVIVAL  OF  TRADITIONALISM 
The  dead  still  speak,  as  M.  de  Vogu^  has  aptly  reminded  us;*^^ 
"'  His  "Les  Morts  qui  Parlent,"  indeed,  is  nothing  so  much  as  a  hymn  in 
praise  of  tradition.  Cf.  M.  Bourget's  essay  in  "Etudes  et  Portraits"  Vol.  III. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         167 

and  the  doctrines  of  Bonald  have  found  a  curious  revivification 
in  our  tiine.'-^  The  age  when  it  was  permissible  to  adore  the 
Revolution  passed  away  with  the  Franco-German  war;  and 
with  its  scientific  interpretation  a  decisive  challenge  was  flung 
at  the  pretensions  of  democracy.  The  authoritarian  tradition, 
in  factjjs_far  Jrom  dead;  and  it  is  only  within  the  most  recent 
times  that  the  TKird  Republic  has  won  the  secure  confidence  of 
the  French  people.  Even  today  its  claims  are  rejected  by 
thinkers  of  no  light  significance.  To  them  it  represents  an  in- 
tellectual attitude  not  merely  distasteful,  but  even  out  of  ac- 
cord with  the  facts  of  social  fife.  They  look  upon  the  Revolu- 
tion as  the  starting  point  of  the  democratic  adventure.  They 
accept  the  enquiries  of  M.  Taine  as  authentic  history /^s  and  they 
have  not  hesitated  to  condemn  the  fundamental  dogmas 
for  which  it  stands.  The  idea  of  national  sovereignty  appears 
to  them  a  flagrant  mistake,  and  as  a  consequence,  they  have 
been  driven  back  to  the  ancien  regime.  It  is  in  the  idealisation 
of  its  ^political  formulae  that  they  search  the  avenue  of  social 
salvation.  They  deny  the  validity  of  the  democratic  state.  For 
tEmi,  it  results  in  a  partition  of  power  which  is  wasteful.  It 
makes  pretence  to  an  egalitarianism  fundamentally  incapable 
of  realisation.  It  allies  itself  to  a  febrile  nationalism  which  is 
nolnore'than  the  momentary  confidence  born  of  a  premature 
faith  in  the  possibilities  of  science.  Thg.  things  they  believe 
essential  to  the  right  ordering  of  society-religion,  unity  of  power 
inequality,  the  mysticism  of  faith — all  these  they  rightly  per- 
ceive are  out  of  accord  with  the  traditions  of  democr3,tic  re- 
gime^  The  transformation  of  the  modern  state  thus  seems  to 
them  fraught  with  the  gravest  dangers  to  its  welfare.  It  is  the 
spirit,  at  any  rate,  of  Bonald;  and  few  things  have  a  more 
curious  interest  than  this  renewed  enthusiasm  for  his  dogmas. 

Historically,  indeed,  the  bond  of  intellectual  filiation  is  log- 
ical and  clear.     The  traditionalist  and  ultramontane  schools 

127  M.  M.  Bourget  and  Salamon  have  edited  a  selection  of  his  works 
with  a  preface  by  the  former.  Cf .  also  L.  Dimier,  "Les  Maitres  de  la  Contre- 
R^volution"  and  the  two  laborious  articles  by  C.  Marechalin  the  "Annales 
de  Philosophie  Chr^ienne"  for  1910  and  1911. 

128  Cf.  M.  Bourget's  study,  "Etude  et  Portraits,"  III,  82-113. 

'29  Cf .  the  very  able  and  suggestive  analysis  of  their  attitude  by  D. 
Powdi,  "Traditionalisme  et  D6moratie." 


1(.S        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

exercised  upon  Combe  the  profoundest  influence;  and  positiv- 
ism, accordingly,  had  no  sympathy  with  democracy.  He  be- 
heved  in  the  value  of  integrated  organisation;  and  it  was  from 
that  starting-point  that  he  began  his  assault  upon  individualism. 
He  was  impressed,  like  Bonald,  with  the  inequalities  of  men; 
and  in  the  distribution  of  power  he  saw  its  dissolution.  Liberty 
seemed  to  him  the  most  fatal  of  errors,  and  the  yearning  for  it 
no  more  than  a  disease  of  the  Western  mind.  He  equated  lib- 
ert}'  with  anarchy,  and  the  Declaration  of  Rights  he  dismissed 
as  private  metaphysics.  Hejdesired  a  science  of  experimental 
politics  and  its  criteria  of  good  were  to  be  based  upon  the  status 
quo}^'^  When  there  was  added  to  his  quasi-scientific  contempt 
for  individualism,  his  worship  of  order  and  of  unity  the  mate- 
rials for  the  modern  protest  were  already  prepared.  But  to  his 
analysis  the  illusions  of  the  Franco-German  war  added  the 
pessimism  of  Taine  and  the  subtle  pyrrhonisms  of  Renan.^^^ 
The  corner-stones  of  that  edifice  the  nineteenth  century  had  so 
patently  erected  seemed  thus  to  be  overthrown.  It  then  seemed 
legitimate  to  go  back  to  an  era  untroubled  by  the  neaessity  of 
accepting  democracy  as  axiomatic. 

It  is  this  restoration  which  modern  traditionalism  has  effected; 
and  if  the  assault  has  been  confined  to  a  small  group  of  thinkers 
it  is  impossible  to  deny  the  ability  with  which  it  has  been  made. 
Historical  circumstances,  moreover,  have  helped  it  much.  The 
last  twenty-five  years  have  seen  a  steady  decline  in  the  vitality 
of  parliamentary  government. ^^^  The  struggle  against  the 
church,  the  development  of  a  labour  party  hostile  to  the  state, 
the  patent  deficiencies  of  the  civil  administration,  the  relation 
between  the  army  and  the  fanatic  clericals  have  all  combined 

""  Cf .  the  remarkable  essay  of  M.  Faguet  in  the  third  volume  of  his 
"Politiques  et  Moralistes."  The  historically,  but  not  intellectually,  important 
volume  of  M.  Maurras — "L'Avenir  de  I'lntelligence" — is  useful  in  this 
connexion. 

"'  On  the  anti-democratic  theories  of  Renan,  M.  G.  Strauss'  "La  Politique 
de  Renan"  is  of  great  importance. 

132  Works  like  Ostrogorski's  "Democracy  and  the  Organisation  of  Polit- 
ical Parties,"  Wallas'  "Human  Nature  in  Politics,"  Michel's  "Political 
Parties"  and  Walter  Lippmann's  "Preface  to  Politics"  show  this  attitude 
very  remarkably.  Cf.  also  M.  Charles  Benoist,  "La  Crise  de  I'Etat  Mo- 
derne,"  Vol.  i. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         169 

to  throw  the  most  unworthy  characteristics  of  a  bourgeois 
democracy  into  its  ugUest  perspective.  Even  the  stoutest 
defenders  of  the  Republic  have  been  eager  for  the  adoption  of 
new  methods,  for  the  discovery  of  a  more  effective  synthesis. 
In  the  result,  it  has  not  been  difficult  to  construct  a  case  against 
the  accepted  axioms  of  democratic  government.  The  science 
which  overthrew  the  antiquated  theology  of  the  ancicn  regime 
erected  no  adequate  system  in  its  place.  The  political  methods 
of  modern  government  were  found^  to  be  worthless  instruments 
so  long  as  they  were  not  based  upon  the  simultaneous  possession 
of  economic  power."^  The  spread  of  popular  education  achieved 
far  less  than  had  been  predicted  for  it.  In  the  consequent  dis- 
illusion protest  was  inevitable.  Nothing  was  easier,  and  nothing 
was  more  natural,  than  to  reject  the  political  theory  of  the 
Revolution.  But  where  the  protest  failed  was  in  its  inability 
to_understand — as  Bonald  failed  to  understand — that  the  true 
course  was  rather  to  utilise  the  experience  of  the  nineteenth 
century  and  to  temper  it  by  logical  innovation  than  to  dismiss 
the  experience  of  a  hundred  years.  The  disillusion  was  less 
disgust  than  dissatisfaction;  and  it  was  not  difficult  to  perceive 
that  to  the  majority  of  men  the  cure  for  democratic  failure  was 
more  democracy.  However  ugly  might  be  the  perversion  of 
its  forms  it  still,  for  most,  at  any  rate,  wore  an  aspect  more 
politically  acceptable  than  that  of  any  other  system.  The  dis- 
tress which  gave  rise  to  renewed  enquiry  was  born  rather 
from  a  realisation  of  the  eventual  certainties  of  democracy, 
an  impatience  with  its  hesitations,  than  from  any  thorough- 
going rejection  of  its  postulates.  But  those  who  denied  its 
adequacy  had  at  the  least  a  superficial  basis  for  their  attack. 
It  is  perhaps  not  surprising  that  it  is  from  men  of  letters 
rather  than  from  students  of  politics  that  tlie  assault  has 
mainly  come;  and  they  have  therein  finely  maintained  the 
great  French  tradition  of  making  criticism  a  commentary 
upon  life.  WTiat  is  fundamentally  important  in  their  attitude 
has  been  best  represented  by  Brunetiere  and  Bourget.  M. 
Brunetiere^  indeed  is  less  a  political  than  a  moral  analyst,  and 

"*  This  is  really  the  starting-point  of  the  syndicalist  attack  on  the  state. 
See,  above  all,  the  very  brilliant  articles  of  M.  E.  Berth  in  the  "Mouve- 
ment  Socialiste"  for  1907-8. 


170        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

less  an  analyst  than  a  superb  master  of  intellectual  controversy; 
and  it  is  rather  with  the  moral  implications  than  with  the  polit- 
ical structure  of  democracy  that  he  has  been  concerned.  He 
represents  essentially  the  reaction  against  the  scientific  move- 
ment of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  what  he  has  brilliantly 
performed  is  the  relentless  examination  of  its  claims.  But  he 
has  never  forgotten  that  science  and  democracy  are  twin  sis- 
ters; and  his  criticism  of  the  one  has  been,  in  fact,  a  veiled 
assault  upon  the  other.  M.  Bourget  seems  almost  a  reincar- 
nation of  Bonald — of  a  Bonald,  indeed,  who  has  read  his  Comte 
and  his  Darwin,  and  emulated  the  literary  charm  of  Joseph 
de  Maistre.  He  has  occupied  himself  with  the  political  foun- 
dations of  the  modern  state,  and  he  has  attempted  to  undermine 
them  by  means  wliich  Bonald  would  assuredly  not  have  re- 
jected. Nor  has  able  assistance  been  wanting  to  their  en- 
quiry. With  every  virtue  except  moderation  and  clearsighted- 
ness M.  Maurras  seems  to  have  been  endowed;  and  his  ruth- 
less polemic  has  given  birth  to  a  school  of  thought  which  is 
doing  nothing  so  much  as  the  reinterpretation  of  the  ancien 
regime  in  terms  of  modern  Hfe.^^'*  M^Barres  has  lent  the  support 
of  his  delicate  nationalism  to  the  reaction;  and  what  his  work 
has  lacked  in  vigour  and  power  has  been  more  than  compen- 
sated by  the  clearness  and  sincerity  of  its  expression. ^^^  The 
conversion  of  M.  Lemaitre  to  this  school  is  only  the  most 
striking  of  many  similar  changes.  ^^^  It  is  hardly  too  much  to 
say  that  the  protagonists  of  the  reaction  remain  unequalled 
in  France  for  the  power  with  which  their  cause  has  been 
advocated. 

Complete  unity  of  purpose,  indeed,  the  traditionalists  can- 
not be  said  to  possess.  They  are  agreed  rather  upon  what  they 
deny  than  upon  their  affirmations.    The  pagan  eclecticism  of 

"^  The  important  work  of  M.  Maurras  is  scattered  over  "L' Action  Fran- 
gaise."  But  see  his  "Enquete  Sur  La  Monarchie"  (1909),  his  "Dilemme 
de  Marc  Sagnier"  and  his  "Trois  Id^es  PoUtiques."  An  interesting  crit- 
icism is  that  of  Dcscoqs,  "A  Travers  I'Oeuvre  de  M.  Maurras." 

"''  Cf.  his  "L'Ennemi  des  Lois"  and  his  "Scenes  et  Doctrines  du  Na- 
tionahsm"  especially  the  preface.  There  is  a  brilliant  critique  of  his 
work  in  M.  Parodi's  volume. 

"6  Cf.  Main-ras,  "Enquete,"  427  ff. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         171 

M.  Maurras  can  hardly  live  in  permanent  comfort  with  the 
strict  religious  orthodoxy  of  M.  Bourget;  nor  has  the  religious 
doctrine  of  either  any  necessary  or  coherent  connexion  with  the 
positivist  Cathohcism  of  Brunetiere.  But  a  school  of  thought 
they  have  been  able  to  create,  and  the  hypotheses  for  which 
they  stand  are  a  logical  and  adequate  whole.  They  derive, 
indeed,  a  certain  factitious  interest  from  the  political  life  of 
modern  France.  They  are  so  passionately  in  antagonism  to 
its  fundamental  outlines  as  to  demand,  almost  of  necessity,  a 
careful  examination.  Their  ideas  are  the  ideas  of  men  who  have 
not  hesitated  to  hold  themselves  aloof  from  a  world  with  which 
they  feel  no  sympathy.  There  is  a  certain  self-satisfaction  in 
the  completeness  of  their  paradoxes  which  makes  them  again 
and  again  wilHng  to  make  a  holocaust  of  truth  that  their  logic 
may  have  her  victories.  But  therein  they  are  no  more  than 
true  to  the  traditions  they  represent.  They  elevate  their  de- 
sires into  principles  in  the  approved  fashion  of  Bonald.  They 
follow  their  master  in  making  their  dissatisfaction  with  the 
age  the  foundation  of  their  system.  Every  theory  of  the  state, 
indeed,  must  in  some  degree  be  the  expression  of  private  thought. 
But  it  has  been  in  a  special  degree  true  of  traditionalism  that 
it  has,  albeit  unconsciously,  apotheosised  the  subjective  atti- 
tude. Its  doctrines  have  been  singularly  more  personal  than 
those  of  any  other  school.  Insofar  as  that  has  been  the  case, 
traditionalism  has  been,  inevitably,  a  narrow  and  transient 
expression  of  discontent.  It  has  resulted  in  an  unreality  which 
is  entirely  inadequate  for  the  purpose  of  practical  politics. 
But  a  weakness  for  the  unreal  and  the  impractical  is  perhaps 
one  of  the  indulgences  permitted  to  the  upholders  of  the  theo- 
cratic system. 

IX.  THE  TRADITIONALISM  OF  M.  BRUNETIERE 

The  starting-point  of  Brunetiere's  attitude^^^  seems  to  have 
been  his  dissatisfaction  with  the  naturalism  of  the  later  nine- 
teenth century. ^'^    In  art  and  in  letters  alike,  he  found  that  the 

13'  On  Brunetiere's  work  generally  see  Parodi,  op.  cit.  31-71,  and  the 
powerful  essay  by  V.  Guiraud,  "Les  Maitres  de  I'Heure,"  59-141. 
138  (^f_  "Lg  Roman  Naturaliste"  passim. 


172        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

standards  of  authority  evolved  in  the  classical  period  of  French 
literature  were  no  longer  accepted.  This  absence  of  tradi- 
tional criteria  seemed  to  him  to  result  in  dangerous  consequences 
to  social  life.  Not  only  were  the  naturalists  pessimistic  in  their 
general  philosophy,  but  they  had  surrendered  all  interest  in, 
and  all  effort  after,  moral  judgment.  They  became  purely 
individualist  in  outlook,  and  they  proclaimed  the  worth  of 
experience  for  its  own  sake,  without  reference  to  its  moral 
character.  Their  aesthetic  was  entirely  subjective,  and  they 
seemed  to  claim,  at  whatever  cost,  the  right  to  cultivate  to 
the  full  their  own  personality.  They  trod,  in  fact,  the  primrose 
path  to  anarchy.  Nor  was  this  all.  They  did  not  hesitate  to 
affirm  that  scientific  progress  had  justified  their  pretensions. 
They  were  doing  no  more  than  to  claim  for  art  and  for  litera- 
ture their  right  to  the  fullest  enquiry.  In  rigidly  scientific 
fashion,  they  were  accumulating  observations  upon  life.  They 
were  largely  indifferent  to  the  consequence  of  their  examination; 
for  it  was  not  the  business  of  the  scientist  to  concern  himself 
with  practice.  It  seemed  to  Brunetiere  in  the  most  dangerous 
sense  immoral  and  unrealistic  thus  to  disregard  the  reaction 
of  enquiry  upon  life.  It  showed  an  absence  of  social  feeling,  a 
failure  to  understand  that  it  is  the  bonds,  rather  than  the  in- 
terstices of  existence  that  must  be  emphasised.  The  lesson  of 
the  naturalists  would  loose  the  chains  of  social  cohesion.  The 
overthrow  of  this  critical  anarchism  was  the  business  of  every 
thinker  concerned  for  the  welfare  of  the  state. 

But  an  examination  of  the  basis  of  naturalism  led  him,  obvi- 
ously, to  the  discussion  of  its  historical  foundations. ^^^  He 
could  not  hope  to  understand  its  origins  without  going  back  to 
the  eighteenth  century.  It  was  here,  essentially,  that  the  root 
of  the  trouble  was  to  be  found.  Voltaire,  Diderot,  the  Encyclo- 
pedists, these  were  the  first  men  who  had  not  hesitated  to  peer 
into  every  nook  and  cranny  of  the  social  fabric.  For  antiquity 
they  had  less  a  sense  of  reverence  than  of  distaste.  They  had 
taught  men  to  be  dissatisfied  with  their  condition,  and  they 
had  overthrown  the  traditional  foundations  of  society.  He 
could  not  but  compare  the  confusion  of  the  eighteenth  century 

139  cf_  "Etudes  Critiques,"  4th  series— tlu;  essays  on  Montesquieu, 
Voltaire,  Rousseau. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN    STATE        173 

with  the  meticulous  sense  of  order  so  characteristic  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  He  hked  its  air  of  neatness.  He  Hked 
its  confidence  in  objective  standards  of  conduct.  He  was 
charmed  by  its  a  priori  lack  of  discontent.  The  authoritari- 
anism of  Bossuet,  in  particular,  took  fast  hold  of  his  affections.^^" 
He  began  to  trace  back  to  its  influence  all  that  was  effective 
for  good  in  the  moral  life  of  France.  Unity,  faith,  authority, 
order — these  were  the  watchwords  he  evolved  from  his  re- 
searches. Their  absence  from  the  creations  of  naturalism  was 
the  cause  of  its  maleficent  influence.  It  was  clearly  his  task 
to  erect  an  objective  system  of  critical  enquiry  of  which  these 
should  be  the  essential  principles. 

But  more  than  this  was  demanded.  Some  part,  at  any  rate, 
of  scientific  achievement,  Brunetiere  was  compelled  to  admit, 
and  since  naturalism  threw  around  itself  the  cloak  of  scientific 
enquiry,  it  was  vital  to  set  Hmits  to  the  domain  of  science. 
Here,  indeed,  he  was  confronted  by  the  difficulty  that  while 
he  was  anxious  to  oppose  man  and  nature,  art  and  science,  he 
was  himself  the  urgent  defender  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  in 
the  forms  of  literature. ^"*i  It  was  clearly  necessary  to  escape 
that  conclusion,  or,  at  the  least,  to  bend  it  to  his  purposes. 
It  was  here,  perhaps,  that  Brunetiere  made  his  most  brilliant 
effort. ^^  The  causes  of  variation  are  unknown.  Change  is 
simply  a  fact — for  which  no  reason  can  be  ascribed.  Aristotle, 
Moliere,  Darwin — we  can  postulate  no  adequate  cause  for 
their  emergence.^^^  They  are  simply  given  us;  and  their  effort 
is  the  starting-point  of  each  new  direction  evolution  may  take. 
What  Brunetiere  did  was  to  deny  the  applicability  of  causation 

""  The  posthumous  volume  on  Bossuet  edited  by  M.  Guiraud  is  de- 
cisive testimony  on  this  point. 

"1  Cf.  "L'Evolution  de  la  poesie  lyrique"  and  "L'Evolution  des  genres" 
and  "La  Doctrine  evolutive"  in  the  sixth  series  of  "Etudes  Critiques." 

"2  What  follows  is  in  reality  a  summary  of  his  four  volumes,  the  "Dis- 
cours  de  Combat"  and  the  "Sur  Les  Chemin  de  Croyance."  The  funda- 
mental articles  are  "La  Renaissance  de  I'idealisme,"  "L'Artet  la  morale, 
Le  besoin  de  croire"  in  the  first,  "L'Idee  de  solidarite"  in  the  second, 
"La  Renaissance  du  paganisme,  Taction  sociale  du  Christianisme,  TEvo- 
lution  du  concept  de  science"  in  the  third,  volume  of  the  "Discours." 
See  also  his  "Apres  le  proces"  in  Revue  des  Deiix  Mondes  for  1898. 

i«  Cf.  "G^nie  dansl  'art"  in  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  for  1884. 


174        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

to  this  field.  Ignorahimiis  he  wrote  large  over  the  entrance  to 
it.  But  immediately  that  admission  is  made  there  is  room  for 
a  system  of  ethics  which,  above  all,  has  objective  standards  of 
conduct.  When  we  postulate  the  impossibility  of  knowing  the 
causes  of  variation,  there  is  need  of  the  dogmas  of  Christianity. 
It  seems,  at  least  to  the  outsider,  an  amazingly  scholastic 
syllogism;  but,  after  all,  the  syllogism  was  the  invention  of 
the  scholastics.  For  variation  is  caused  by  chance,  and  chance 
is  only  the  name  the  eighteenth  century  coined  for  Providence. 
Evolution  makes  us  a  mosaic  of  ancestral  virtue  and  ancestral 
vice — and  that  is  essentially  the  doctrine  of  original  sin.  Here 
is  the  basis  of  the  Christian  teaching,  and  we  accept  it  because 
its  main  achievement  is  to  promise  salvation  at  the  cost  merely 
of  repressing  the  evil  influence  of  our  natural  origin.  We  have 
to  cease,  in  fact,  to  follow  the  recldess  will-o'-the-wisp  of  individ- 
ual desire.  The  main  need  of  life  is  discipline,  and  we  require 
discipline  that  social  life  may  be  possible.  The  worth  of  any 
doctrine  thus  consists  in  its  social  utility  which  Brunetiere 
equates  with  its  morality.  But  the  demands  of  discipline  are 
clearly  order  and  unity;  and  order  and  unity  can  only  be 
acquired  by  the  recognition  of  the  worth  of  tradition.^^  For 
tradition  is  the  soul  of  a  nation,  the  deposit  of  those  traditions 
whereby  its  life  has  been  guided.  More,  it  is  even  a  national 
protector,  for  it  acts  as  a  safeguard  against  the  revolt  of  in- 
consistency. To  accept  tradition  is  to  accept  something  which 
gives  to  hfe  an  objective  logic,  a  guarantee  against  divergent 
aims  and  contradictory  desires.  Because  we  need  discipline 
we  must  have  tradition.  But  tradition  is  the  twin-sister  of 
religion  and  gains  therefrom  the  adequate  sanction  of  self- 
sacrifice.  The  one  religion  which  rightly  insists  upon  their 
worth  is  Catholicism,  and  it  was  the  liberal  wing  of  the  CathoUc 
party  to  which,  accordingly,  Brunetiere  offered  his  support."^ 
There  is  not  an  element  in  this  doctrine  which  Bonald  would 
have  failed  to  recognise.  Its  insistence  on  discipline  as  the 
safeguard  against  moral  anarchy  is  only  a  more  pleasing  form 

•<■•  "Les  Ennemis  de  I'Arai  Fransaise"  in  the  first  series  of  the  "Dis- 
cours." 

145  (^'f  "Tradition  et  Dcveloppement"  in  the  "Annales  de  Phil.  Chr." 
for  1900. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN   STATE         175 


of  the  emphasis  laid  by  the  earlier  thinker  on  self-sacrifice. 
And  Brunetidre  in  essence  rejected  Protestantism  for  exactly 
the  same  reason  as  Bonald — that  its  foundations  already  im- 
ply anarchy.  It  was  for  that  reason  that  he  denied  the  funda- 
mental formula  of  Descartes,  exactly  as  Bonald,  a  century  be- 
fore, had  urged  the  worthlessness  of  metaphysics.  Both 
thinkers  agreed  that  faith  was  the  primary  need — the  willing- 
ness to  leap  into  the  dark  hinterland  of  mental  action  beyond 
the  hmits  justified  by  rationalist  logic.  And,  like  Bonald,  this 
attitude  led  him  to  turn  to  the  church  as  the  best  instrument 
of  moral  unity. ^'^^  It  would  provide,  in  his  view,  the  objective 
criterion  of  conduct  by  the  enunciation  of  its  dogmas.  He  even 
believed  that  freedom  of  thought  would  thereby  be  assisted, 
since  the  thinker,  having  at  his  disposal  an  infallible  test  of 
good,  would  have  the  assured  means  of  right  thought.  It 
would  thus  bring  peace  to  men's  souls,  a  refuge  from  the  tor- 
tures of  uncertainty  which  drove  the  nineteenth  century  into 
an^acceptance  of  moral  indifferentism.  Here  lay  the  supreme 
merit  of  orthodoxy,  that  it  gave  life  the  integration  of  doctrinal 
consistency  That,  indeed,  was  the  virtue  de  Maistre  and 
Bonald  had  claimed  for  their  theories.  They  had  been  con- 
fronted by  an  age  of  disruption,  and  they  had  found  in  infalli- 
ble unity  the  only  relief  from  doubt.  They  had  urged,  as  Brune- 
tiere  urged,  that  without  the  sanctions  of  authority,  the  indi- 
vidual soul  is  cast  chartless  on  an  unending  ocean.  It  was 
because  he  cared  so  deeply  for  right  and  wrong  that  he  was 
willing  to  enchain  the  reason  of  man;  but  he  made  the  mistake 
of  his  predecessors  and  identified  his  private  theory  of  right 
conduct  with  the  public  needs  of  his  age. 

His  whole  work,  indeed,  is  a  protest  against  democracy 
simply  because  he  has  so  overwhelming  a  sense  of  the  dangers 
of  moral  error.  He  deems  the  fabric  of  society  so  fragile  that 
he  offers  worship  to  the  forces  which,  at  whatever  cost,  have 
prevented  its  overthrow.  It  is  a  philosophy  that  is  unwilling 
to  take  risks.  It  refuses  all  experiment  of  which  the  results 
are  not  merely  predetermined,  but  are  also  pronounced  good 
by  a  tribunal  which  faith  has  accepted  as  infalhble.  But  such 
a  theory  can  only  end  by  taking  things  as  they  are  as  the  ideal; 

146  Qf  _  "Apres  une  visite  au  Vatican"  in  "Questions  Actuelles." 


176        AUTHORITY    IX    THE    MODERN   STATE 

for  anything  else  would  be  out  of  accord  with  tradition,  above 
all,  out  of  accord  with  the  oldest  of  traditions  which  is  his 
own  tribunal  of  enquiry.  It  matters,  perhaps,  but  little  that 
the  progress  of  psychological  science  should  run  directly  counter 
to  Brunetiere's  ideas.  What  is  mainly  of  importance  is  the 
reahsation  that  the  political  implications  of  his  thought  are 
the  exclusion  of  liberty  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  equality  on  the 
other.  It  involves  the  exclusion  of  hberty  because  it  insists 
that  men  shall  think  only  in  directions  pronounced  good  by 
external  enquiry.  It  thus  takes  no  account  of  freedom  of  con- 
science. Its  standard  of  morals  has  reference  only  to  the  gen- 
eral need.  It  sacrifices  the  individual  to  its  sense  of  absorp- 
tiveness.  It  involves  the  exclusion  of  equality  because  the 
infallibility  it  confers  upon  its  tribunal  must  inevitably  be 
extended  to  the  men  who  operate  it. 

We  declare,  in  fact,  the  divine  right  of  Rome^  and  the  only 
equality  men  can  then  enjoy  is  the  equality  of  intellectual 
servitude.  It  thus  does  more  than  release  men  from  thought. 
It  is  dcterminist  in  that  its  fundamental  principles  a^e  already 
known,  and,  as  with  Bonald,  the  only  business  of  the  thinker 
is  deduction.  It  demands  the  unity  of  power;  and,  thereby,  it 
asks  from  each  of  us  exactly  what  the  modern  world  has  pro- 
claimed its  most  priceless  heritage.  It  is  basically  a  static 
philosophy.  It  puts  the  mind  of  men  into  leading-strings  and 
makes  of  Rome  their  driver.  But  it  has  been  the  whole  lesson 
of  experience  that  the  dev,elopment  of  Roman  doctrine  is,  for 
the  most  part,  a  development  forced  from  without;  and  by 
universalising  the  dominion  of  Rome  Bruneti^re  was,  in  effect, 
erecting  a  barrier  against  intellectual  advance.^^^  That  the 
price  of  order  can  be  too  high  seems  never  to  have  crossed  his 
mind.  Nor  did  he  occupy  himself  with  the  problem  of  how 
order  was  to  be  attained.  Like  Bonald,  he  seems  to  have  taken 
it  for  granted  that  there  would  be  no  period  of  transition  from 
the  anarchy  of  which  he  complained  to  the  unity  he  exalted. 
He  seemed  satisfied  that  principles  are  accepted  by  the  mere 
fact  of  their  enunciation. 

But,  after  all,  the  first  fundamental  truth  is  the  existence 
of  difference,  and  to  ignore  it  is  to  avoid  the  central  problem. 

"'  As  he  himself  reahsed.  Cf.  "Discours,"    3rd  scries,  p.  229. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         177 

What  Brunetiere  did  was  to  repeat  the  error  of  his  predecessor 
and  so  to  dislike  his  age  as  to  misinterpret  the  conditions  of 
action.  He  failed  to  understand  that  the  problem  in  moral  as 
in  political  hfe  is  a  problem  of  guarantees.  All  that  men  are 
willing  to  sacrifice  to  society  is  the  lowest  and  not  the  highest 
common  factor  of  their  intimate  beliefs.  For  they  are  not 
simply  members  of  a  herd;  they  are  something  more.  They 
are  individuals  who  are  interested  passionately  in  themselves 
as  an  end,  and  no  social  philosophy  can  be  adequate  which 
neglects  that  egocentric  element.  That,  indeed,  is  merely  to 
say  that  no  social  philosophy  can  be  other  than  pluralistic. 
Ragged  and  disjointed  as  a  consequence  it  may  be;  and  con- 
tinually out  of  accord  with  venerable  tradition.  But  this, 
after  all,  is  a  ragged  and  disjointed  world,  and  it  continually 
is  guilty  of  unhistorical  innovation.  Sovereignty,  in  fact,  has 
necessarily  to  be  distributed  in  order  that  the  purposes  of  men 
may  be  achieved.  The  test  of  their  achievement,  whether 
moral  or  intellectual,  or  political,  is  not  an  immediate  reference 
to  a  permanent  and  external  canon,  but  the  consequences  of 
action  in  the  elucidation  and  enrichment  of  life.  It  is  this, 
after  all,  which  makes  the  loyalties  of  men  so  diversified;  for 
they  are  bundles  of  conflicting  aims.^^^  It  is  this  too,  at  bot- 
tom, which  gives  to  the  loose  sovereignty  of  the  democratic 
state  its  ultimate  justification:  that  alone  of  all  governmental 
conceptions  it  admits  the  adequate  realisation  of  personahty. 
A  theory  which  would  sacrifice  them  to  its  cross-section  of 
logic  is  at  once  forced  and  unnatural.  It  has  value,  maybe, 
insofar  as  it  throws  light  on  the  tendencies  of  the  time;  but 
it  is  out  of  harmony  with  its  inevitable  direction.  ' 

X.     THE  TRADITIONALISM  OF  M.  BOURGET 

The  work  of  M.  Bourget  is  little  else  than  an  assault  upon  the 
foundations  of  the  nineteenth  century.^^*    It  is  from  an  analysis 

"**  Cf .  Mr.  Lippman's  note  in  The  New  Republic  for  April  14, 1917,  and 
my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  passim. 

"3  It  is  very  difficult  to  particularise.  But  no  one  who  reads  "L'Etape" 
and  "Un  Divorce"  with  the  three  volumes  of  "Etudes  et  Portraits"  can 
mistake  the  direction.  There  is  a  very  clever  attack  on  M.  Bourget  in 
Jules  Sageret's  "Les  Grands  Convertis."  See  also  V.  Guiraud,  op.  cil., 
and  Parodi  op.  cit. 


178        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

of  what  he  believes  to  be  its  character  that  he  has  come  to  the 
acceptance  of  traditionahst  doctrine.  Brought  up  in  the  school 
of  Renan  and  Taine/^°  he  has  all  their  quasi-scientific  precision 
of  statement  and  of  temper.  His  starting-point  has  been  the 
disillusion  they  suffered  after  the  events  of  1870.  They  came 
to  believe  that  democracy  was  a  political  deception,  and  it  was 
upon  the  basis  of  their  pessimism  that  Bourget  has  erected  his 
theory  of  aristocratic  Catholicism.  Its  resemblance  to  the 
ideas  of  Bonald  is  Kttle  less  than  starthng;  and,  indeed,  it  is 
important  that  M.  Bourget  should  retain  for  him  so  striking 
and  peculiar  an  affection.^^^  For  him  Bonald  remains  one  of 
the  great  masters  of  political  science,  and  no  one  has  been  more 
responsible  for  the  resuscitation  of  the  earlier  thinker.  It  is 
Bonald,  alone,  moreover,  who  has  surpassed  him  in  his  con- 
tempt for  the  eighteenth  century.  To  them  both  the  Revolution 
is  the  crystallisation  of  moral  and  political  error.  The  Declara- 
tion of  the  Rights  of  Man  they  both  disiniss  as  a  puerile  exercise 
in  metaphysics. ^^2  Both  are  contemptuous  alike  of  logic  and  the 
attempt  to  deduce  a  theory  of  poHtics  from  the  abstract  con- 
ceptions of  individualism.  For  M.  Bourget  has  no  confidence 
in  reason.  For  him  it  is  an  instrument  of  destruction,  and  he 
goes  back  to  instinct,  tradition,  prejudice,  for  the  real  sources 
of  events.  He  is  uninterested  in  the  idealism  of  the  Revolution. 
It  seems  to  him  so  contrary  to  the  facts  it  encounters  that  he 
can  have  no  patience  with  its  trifling.  When  he  has  described 
the  facts  he  has  seen,  he  believes  that  he  has  been  given  the 
vision  of  actual  society,  and  it  is  in  his  personal  inductions  that 
he  has  placed  his  confidence.  M.  Bourget,  indeed,  differs  from 
his  predecessor  in  that  he  is  able  to  clothe  his  doctrines  in  a  form 
of  singular  hterary  charm.  He  has  at  his  command  the  specious 
terminology  of  modern  science,^^^  so  that,  often  enough,  what  is 
in  truth  no  more  than  a  plea  can  appear  in  the  guise  of  a  state- 
ment. He  never  wanders  far  from  reality,  even  if  his  realism  is 
essentially  selective.  His  work  is  a  powerful  polemic  against 
the  democratic  state.    Just  as  Bonald  composed  his  attack  in 

1*"  Cf.  "Lettre  Autobiographique." 

1"  Cf.  "Etudes,"  III,  23  ff. 

"2  Cf .  "Etudes,"  III,  the  essay  on  Lc  Peril  Primaire. 

^*^  Cf.  the  curious  first  essay  in  the  first  volume  of  the  "Etudes." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         179 

terms  of  the  Revolution,  so  does  M.  Bourgct  express  his  attitude 
in  terms  of  parliamentary  government.^^"*  But  the  real  defect 
of  Bonald's  teaching  was  its  completely  subjective  character. 
He  built  a  state  on  the  power  of  his  own  order,  and  deemed  that 
he  had  thereby  rendered  service  to  the  ideal.  M.  Bourget, 
indeed,  is  less  selfish;  for  his  satisfaction  with  the  bourgeoisie  to 
which,  by  truth,  he  belongs,  goes  no  further  than  the  admission 
that  it  has  its  place  in  any  scheme  of  pohtical  construction. 
But  not  less  than  Bonald,  his  argument  is  at  the  service  of  his 
desires;  and  he  has  the  less  excuse  than  the  earlier  thinker  sim- 
ply because  he  did  not  write  under  the  shadow  of  1789. 

No  one,  in  fact,  can  study  the  work  of  Bourget  without  being 
convinced  that  the  recognition  of  certain  temperamental  char- 
acteristics is  fundamental  to  the  understanding  of  his  atti- 
tude.^^^  If  M.  Bourget  is  not  a  snob,  it  is  at  any  rate  upon  the 
life  of  a  leisured  and  cultivated  aristocracy  that  he  lavishes  his 
affections.  There  is  no  virtue  with  which  he  is  not  prepared  to 
endow  it.  Delicacy  of  taste,  beauty  of  person,  fineness  of  per- 
ception, clarity  of  insight — into  the  hereditary  possession  of  these, 
his  aristocracy  comes  by  the  simple  fact  of  birth.  It  alone 
is  capable  of  cultivating  all  that  is  rich  and  delicate  in  life. 
Nothing  is  more  bitter  than  Bourget's  contempt  for  those  who 
would  seek  to  usurp  the  functions  of  an  aristocracy.  His  ple- 
beians are  always  devoid  of  the  qualities  which  can  make  them 
acceptable  as  other  than  obedient  subjects.  They  always  end 
miserably  when  they  seek  to  raise  themselves  above  their  class. 
For,  by  the  mere  fact  of  birth  they  are  excluded  from  the  full 
understanding  of  elegance  and  refinement.  The  ordinary  affairs 
of  commerce  and  agriculture — for  these  they  are  hereditarily 
endowed.  But  for  the  larger  spheres  of  life,  social,  political, 
intellectual,  they  have  no  aptitude.  Thus  the  real  tragedy  of 
life  is  the  exclusion  of  the  men  of  talent  from  their  rightful  place 
in  the  world. 

It  must,  indeed,  be  confessed  that  the  refinements  of  M.  Bour- 
get's aristocracy  are  a  little  exotic.    Most  of  his  aristocrats  are 

1^^  Cf.  especially  the  "Crise  du  Parliamentarisme"  in  Vol.  II  of  "Pages 
de  Critique." 

^^5  On  all  this  the  earlier  pages  of  M.  Sageret's  book  are  both  apt  and 
amusing. 


180        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

a  little  weary,  and  they  have  drained  the  cup  of  life  to  the  dregs. 
So  that  they  have  need  of  that  which  will  enable  them  to  main- 
tain existence  in  its  proper  perspective.  It  is  thus  that  they 
come  to  adopt  the  Catholic  religion — as  a  kind  of  perfume  for 
the  soul.  It  is  thus,  too,  that  they  possess  themselves  of  the  mor- 
al superiority  which  distinguishes  their  mind  from  that  of  the  vul- 
gar herd.  For  they  wear  their  religion  as  a  beautiful  garment, 
and  they  have  none  of  the  intense  reahsation  of  its  presence  by 
which  the  lower  classes  deface  it.  Their  acceptance  of  relig- 
ion is  largely  a  result  of  their  world-weariness  on  the  one  hand, 
and  their  recognition  of  its  social  utility  on  the  other.  They 
accept  it  elegantly,  in  the  spirit  of  an  academician  awarding  a 
prize  of  virtue.  They  do  not  trouble  themselves  with  dogmas. 
They  do  not,  as  German  peasants  have  attempted,  undermine 
its  social  character.  They  recognise  its  function  in  the  promo- 
tion of  social  well-being,  and  they  accept  it  out  of  duty  to  the 
position  they  occupy. 

For  the  fundamental  fact  in  their  character  is  the  unique- 
ness of  their  position.  M.  Bourget  has  continually  insisted 
that  the  virtues  he  extols  in  the  aristocracy  are  peculiar  to 
that  class.  They  form  an  elite,  a  caste.  Study  the  world  of 
politics  or  of  industry,  and  those  qualities  are  notably  absent. 
And  their  absence  is  the  more  notable  since  the  one  object  of 
the  bourgeoisie  is  their  cultivation.  The  simple  fact  is  that 
nowhere  is  there  present  outside  the  aristocracy  the  milieu 
appropriate  to  their  development.  And  since  it  is  clear  that 
these  are  the  qualities  demanded  of  a  governing  race,  it  is 
obvious  that  the  aristocracy,  reinforced,  he  will  admit,  by  the 
upper  class  of  the  bourgeoisie,  ought  to  have  charge  of  govern- 
ment. They  alone  have  the  faculties  which  will  take  from  the 
business  of  politics  its  modern  uncleanliness.  A  class-strati- 
fication of  society,  at  once  formal  and  fairly  rigid,  he  deems 
essential  to  its  well-being.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  this  class 
does  not  rule  today.  It  is  true  also  that  its  qualities  are  de- 
voted to  any  save  political  ends;  but  that,  after  all,  is  the  fault 
of  the  system  to  which  we  submit.  Such  superior  beings  can- 
not be  expected  to  ask  the  suffrages  of  the  mob,  or  to  mingle 
with  the  modern  politician.     It  is  true,  indeed,  that  men  may 

»6  "Etudes,"  III,  264. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         181 


be  met  who,  though  not  of  the  aristocracy  by  birth,  seem  to 
partake  of  its  quaUty.  They,  however,  are  exceptional;  and 
the  race  from  which  they  spring  is  rapidly  exhausted  by  the 
effort  it  expends  in  the  production  of  such  imitations.  We 
cannot  erect  a  theory  upon  the  chance  fact  of  their  occasional 
emergence.  That  would  be  to  consider  man  as  an  individual 
and  to  give  him  rights  in  virtue  of  his  own  personality.  But 
that  is  a  doubly  false  conception.  Social  rights  M.  Bourget 
denies;  it  is  upon  social  duties  that  he  lays  his  emphasis.  It  is 
the  duty  of  the  aristocrat  to  accept  luxury  and  refinement  just 
as  it  is  the  duty  of  the  peasant  to  accept  his  lot  to  toil.  They 
accept  it,  because  as  individuals  they  are  unimportant.  The 
main  need  is  to  promote  the  solidarity  of  society  and  that  is 
effected  by  the  expression  of  its  needs  in  terms  of  the  family. 
Now  of  that  the  individual  is  but  part  and  his  personal  tastes 
are  thus  insignificant.  The  fundamental  fact,  indeed,  upon 
which  Bourget's  system  of  ideas  is  founded  is  the  denial  of  an 
individual  regime.  For  immediately  we  admit  its  claims  we 
remove  the  basis  of  a  horizontal  social  structure.  We  cast 
confusion  into  the  state.  Birth  becomes  unimportant.  Culture 
is  a  matter  of  purchase  and  sale.  Competition  becomes  the 
order  of  the  day  and  an  inelegant  dynamic  is  the  basis  of  the 
state.  But  that  is  the  basic  error  of  which  the  nineteenth 
century  has  been  guilty. 

It  is  clear  enough — it  is  also  unimportant — that  such  an 
attitude  is  out  of  accord  with  the  current  of  thought  in  our  time. 
But  when  M.  Bourget  left  his  romances  to  restate  his  social 
theories  in  a  more  formal  guise  it  was  upon  the  basis  of  these 
sentiments  that  he  wrote.  Nor  did  he  fail  to  claim  for  his  doc- 
trine the  benison  of  science.  The  fundamental  virtue  of  Bonald, 
he  pointed  out,  was  his  realism.  He  based  his  theories  on  the 
facts  of  social  experience  and  his  tremendous  inductions  have 
thus  the  validation  of  life.  Such  a  method  M.  Bourget  deemed 
finely  experimentalist  in  temper.  He  compared  it  to  the  dis- 
coveries of  Le  Play,  and,  indeed,  the  researches  of  the  latter 
have  long  been  annexed  by  the  traditionalists.^^^  What  M. 
Bourget  did  i^ot  understand  was  the  simple  truth  that  the  im- 

1^'  M.  L6on  de  Montesquieu  has,  indeed,  edited  an  anthology  of  Le 
Play's  writings  on  this  principle. 


182        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

portant  contribution,  both  of  Bonald  and  of  himself,  is  not  the 
facts  collected,  but  the  interpretation  that  is  based  on  those 
facts.  Bonald  may  emphasise  the  excesses  of  the  Revolution 
just  as  M.  Bourget  himself  insists  on  the  deficiencies  of  parlia- 
mentary democracy.  But  the  problem  does  not  end  there 
There  is  a  side  to  the  Revolution  which  is  not  outrageous  just 
as  there  is  a  side  to  parliamentary  government  which  is  not 
deficient.  Where  the  scientific  temper  is  not  evident  in  the 
work  of  either  critic  is  in  the  modification  of  his  observations 
be  facts  which,  however  unwelcome,  are  still  important.  The 
experimentahst  method,  if  it  is  to  be  valid,  must  consist  in  an 
accurate  report  of  the  experiment. 

Nor  is  there  more  ground  for  satisfaction  in  the  results  of 
the  enquiry,  which,  also,  are  for  M.  Bourget  in  accord  with  the 
discoveries  of  science.  They  are  summed  up  in  a  plea  for  re- 
ligion, for  aristocracy,  and  for  monarchy.  That  is  to  say  that 
M.  Bourget  finds  the  real  need  of  the  nineteenth  century  to 
consist  in  the  destruction  of  its  own  achievement.  Nor  is  he 
at  all  uncomfortable  in  his  denial  of  the  Revolutionary  assump- 
tions. It  is  so  easy  to  take  its  watchword  as  an  abstraction 
instead  of  as  a  programme,  that  M.  Bourget  considers  it  refuted 
by  the  mere  statement  of  the  difficulties  it  encounters.  Lib- 
erty he  identifies  with  anarchy.  He  cannot  understand  the 
enthusiasm  for  its  attainment.  He  seems  to  regard  it  as  no 
more  than  the  product  of  the  uncritical  enthusiasm  of  the 
eighteenth  century  for  individualist  doctrine.  But  individu- 
alism in  only  an  endeavour  to  escape  from  the  consequences 
of  the  social  bond,  and  he  is  thus  happy  in  his  right  to  dismiss 
it.  It  is  hostile  to  order  and  security.  It  shatters  the  exercise 
of  legitimate  authority.  Nor  is  he  less  confident  about  the 
folly  of  equaUty.^^^  This  is  obviously  out  of  accord  with  the 
facts  of  every  day  life.  But  the  mistake  of  M.  Bouitict  is  to. 
think  that  equality  is  the  expression  of  anything  shnc  an  op- 
portunity for  the  full  development  of  personality.  The  study 
of  his  own  master,  Taine,  should  have  taught  him  that  obvious 
lesson.  To  proclaim  that  men  arc  born  equal  is  not  in  the  least 
to  proclaim,  as  M.  Bourget  would  have  us  believe,  that  thej'^ 
are  born  identical.     Equality  so  defined  it  is,  of  course,  easy 

''"^  "Etudes,"  III,  140  ff. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         183 

to  scatter  to  the  winds;  and  where  it  is  absent  there  is  no  real 
ground  for  fraternity.  Brotherhood  is  born  of  similarity  of 
function,  and  where  there  are  the  barriers  of  class,  there  is  no 
ground  for  its  existence.  So  that  when  the  Revolution  has 
been  thus  dismissed,  it  is  at  last  possible  to  attempt  the  re- 
construction of  a  France  which  has  been  untrue  to  herself. 

To  M.  Bourget,  indeed,  the  whole  problem  is  as  simple  as 
an  algebraic  equation,  with  the  consequence  that  his  work  has 
all  the  specious  exactitude  characteristic  of  Taine.  The  life  of 
a  nation  is  its  tradition.  That  has  in  it  elements  of  truth.  But 
M.  Bourget  would  use  the  tradition  of  France  as  a  dogma  and 
he  will  not  allow  the  nineteenth  century  to  form  any  part  of 
it.  For  him,  indeed,  tradition  is  not  a  living  thing,  but  a  series 
of  dead,  inert  principles  to  the  logic  of  which  the  national  life 
must  be  chained.  The  tradition  of  France  is  monarchical, 
regional,  catholic,  aristocratic.^^^  So  at  least  it  is  if  one  neglects 
its  history  since  the  Revolution.  But  that  M.  Bourget  will  do 
without  difficulty  because  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  a 
century  of  novel  experiment  and  he  is  dissatisfied  with  its 
results.  Disorder,  individualism,  scepticism,  corruption,  these 
have  resulted  from  the  adoption  of  the  Revolutionary  ideals; 
and  M.  Bourget  is  unsparing  in  his  denunciation  of  their 
source. ^^"^  Disorder  is  bad  because  only  in  stability  can  se- 
curity be  found.  Individualism  is  contrary  to  the  obvious 
structure  of  society.  Scepticism  is  evil  because  the  nature  of 
the  social  bond  demands  the  sanction  of  religion  if  it  is  to  oper- 
ate at  all  adequately.  Corruption  is  the  clear  consequence  of 
the  method  a  democratic  society  must  evolve  for  its  govern- 
ance. It  is  the  natural  result  of  a  parliamentary  regime  and 
to  him  this  is  the  head  and  centre  of  disaster.  Legislation  is 
passed  in  haste  to  suit  the  transient  whim  of  the  electorate. 
The  most  sacred  rights  of  society  are  lightly  violated.  Promises 
are  wantonly  made  and  as  wantonly  broken.  Personalities 
replace  principles,  and  national  institutions  are  dishonourably 
perverted  to  private  ends.  Party  spirit  replaces  public  spirit. 
The  only  fruit  of  universal  suffrage  is  the  pathetic  manipula- 

159  Cf.  his  letter  to  M.  Maurras  in  the  "Enqugte,"  and  the  latter's  com- 
ment. 

'•^°  "Pages  de  Doctrine,"  Vol.  II,  52  ff. 


184        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

tion  of  the  electorate.  Tli£L_pretended  establishment  of  self- 
government  brings  with  it  only  the  erection  of  a  sinister  oli- 
garchy the  more  dangerous  because  it  is  invisible.  The  elective 
system  fails  to  pick  out  those  who  can  best  serve  the  interests 
of  the  state.  Argument  is  stifled  by  the  development  of  a 
colossal  bureaucratic  machine.  Within  the  chamber,  talk  has 
replaced  action.  The  purely  idle  belief  in  equality  has  resulted 
in  the  withdrawal  of  the  most  capable  from  public  life.  The 
vital  elements  of  the  state,  in  short,  are  poisoned  at  their 
source.  Heroic  remedies  are  essential  if  so  terrible  a  malady 
is  to  be  counteracted. 

It  is,  of  course,  undeniable  that  there  has  been  a  dechne  in 
the  parhamentary  life  of  democracies  in  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century.  That  has  been  true  not  merely  of  France  but  of  every 
country  in  the  old  world  and  the  new.  But  where  Bourget's 
criticism  is  erroneous  is  in  his  suggestion  that  it  is  the  root  idea 
of  democracy  which  is  mistaken.  The  real  truth  is  rather  that 
we  are  working  with  a  machinery  adapted  to  deal  with  a  civili- 
sation immensely  less  complex  than  our  own.  It  is  only  in  our 
time  that  the  full  fruit  of  the  Industrial  Revolution  has  been 
gathered.  Only  since  1870  has  it  been  fundamentally  necessary 
for  the  state  to  relate  itself  to  industrial  problems.  The  decline 
in  the  parliamentary  life  of  France  is  the  decUne  that  is  natural 
to  an  organisation  hampered  by  a  multitude  of  unnecessary 
business.  France  has  had  to  deal  with  constitutional  problems, 
the  Separation,  the  problem  of  administrative  efficiency,  a 
vast  revolution  in  foreign  policy,  a  new  era  in  the  history  of 
labour.  The  whole  centre  of  her  life  has  been  readjusted  at  the 
very  moment  when  the  mechanism  of  government  has  been 
most  inadequate.  But  there  is  certainly  not  perceptible  a 
decline  in  the  quality  of  French  life.  Rather  does  the  outsider 
see  a  gain  in  solidity  and  effectiveness.  Her  political  thought 
has  never  been  richer,  i"  Her  economic  ideas  have  rarely  been 
so  profuse.  Her  literary  achievements  have  been  immense. 
The  condition  of  her  people  has  been  vastly  improved.  And 
beyond  the  traditionalist  group  of  which  M.  Bourget  is  so 

"'  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  mention  names.  But  the  work  of  Duguit, 
of  Geny,  of  Paul-Boncour,  of  Lcroy  and  of  Huuriou  constitutes  an  achieve^ 
ment  of  which  any  nation  might  well  be  proud. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         185 

effective  a  sponsor,  it  does  not  seem  that  there  have  been  any 
doubts  of  democracy. 

Certain  new  truths,  indeed,  France  has  been  compelled  to 
learn.  We  have  too  long  regarded  the  discovery  of  represen- 
tative government  as  a  panacea,  and  nothing  is  today  so  greatly 
needed  as  new  methods  of  administration.  It  is  undeniable 
that  what  is  vaguely  termed  the  general  will  of  society  does  not 
find  complete  expression  either  in  governments  or  in  legisla- 
tures; we  are  simply  forced  to  the  realisation  that  majority 
government  cannot  be  the  last  word  on  our  problems. ^^^  xhe 
real  crux  of  the  democratic  difficulty  is  the  fact  that  political 
power  is  divined  from  economic  power.  Wherein  representa- 
tive government  has  been  supremely  successful  is  .in  the  se- 
curing of  general  political  rights  in  which  rich  and  poor  alike 
have  been  interested;  but  once  the  transition  has  been  made 
from  political  rights  to  economic  interest  the  Taasic  sectional- 
ism of  society  has  been  apparent  to  anyone  who  has  had  the 
patience  to  observe  the  facts.  What  has  happened  is  simply 
a  growing  consciousness  on  the  part  of  the  workers  that  the 
concepts  of  democracy  are  as  applicable  to  industry  as  to  poli- 
tics, and  we  have  lived  in  the  time  of  criticism  and  unrest  which 
is  naturally  symptomatic  of  the  search  for  a  new  synthesis. ^^^ 
But  the  orientation  of  the  problem  is  as  different  as  possible 
from  that  which  M.  Bourget  has  given  it.  He  is  so  obsessed 
by  the  pohtical  vices  of  democracy  that  he  has  neglected 
altogether  their  real  source.  He  has  failed  entirely  to  see  that 
capitalism  on  the  one  hand  and  the  present. form  of  parHa- 
mentary  government  on  the  other  are  nothing  so  much  as 
historic  categories  which  disappear  when  they  have  served  their 
purposes.  In  the  result  the  solution  he  suggests  reads  less  like 
an  answer  to  our  questions  than  an  interesting  survival  from 
an  ancient  time. 

He  demands  a  monarchy.^^^    One  of  the  follies  of  democracy 

i«2  Cf.  Berth's  articles  cited  above.  M's  "National  Being"  is  an  impor- 
tant landmark  in  this  connection.  Cf .  The  New  Republic,  Vol.  X,  p.  270 
and  the  first  chapter  of  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty." 

163  Qf  wliich  M.  Paul-Boncour  in  his  "Federalisme  Economique" 
(1901)  has  brilliantly  sketched  the  outlines.  Cf.  also  Maxime  Leroy's 
'Transformations  de  la  Puissance  Publique." 

'"  On  all  this  M.  Maurras'  "Enqu^te"  is  fundamental. 


186        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

is  its  distribution  of  power  of  which  the  only  consequence  is 
its  nuUification.  But  M.  Bourget  has  only  to  study  history  to 
see  that  the  distribution  of  power  is  only  the  expression  of  cer- 
tain social  facts  which  are  inherent  in  the  nature  of  society. 
It  may  be  true,  as  he  says,  that  monarchy  unifies  that  power; 
but  that  is  exactly  why  monarchy  is  more  and  more  rejected 
as  a  form  of  active  government  by  intelHgent  men.  It  may 
stand  as  the  symbol  of  the  national  soul;  but  it  stands  as  the 
symbol  of  the  national  soul  only  in  its  antiquarian  moments. 
The  self-interest  of  monarchy  may  demand,  as  M.  Bourget 
claims,  that  it  serve  the  national  well-being.  But  the  test  here 
must  be  historical  and  it  is  precisely  because  of  its  failure  so 
to  validate  itself  that  the  monarchical  solution  has  been  re- 
jected. Supple  it  may  be;  but  there  are  other  forms  of  gov- 
ernment no  less  capable  of  elasticity.  M.  Bourget,  indeed, 
would  urge  that  if  the  monarch  be  deceived  error,  after  all,  is 
inherent  in  all  human  endeavour.  He  suggests  that  the  very 
elevation  of  the  monarch's  position,  his  dynastic  interests, 
will  make  his  evasion  of  error  the  more  essential  as  his  responsi- 
bility is  the  greater.  He  finds  in  the  monarchy  the  power  of 
selection  in  which  democracy  has  so  signally  failed.  For  what 
is  here  necessary  is  continuity  which  implies  the  removal  of 
certain  families  from  the  mass  of  the  people  that  they  may  serve 
the  state.  The  corollary  of  his  monarchy,  in  fact,  is  aristoc- 
racy— not,  indeed,  closed  to  external  access.  The  man  of  the 
people  will  be  permitted  to  ascend  above  his  station,  but  he 
must  demonstrate  his  right  and  not  assume  it.  Here  he  goes 
back  to  the  ideal  of  the  ancien  regime  and  finds  in  a  hierarchy 
of  classes  to  each  of  which  its  functions  are  attached  the  true 
method  of  social  distribution.  Of  course  it  goes  without  saying 
that  the  members  of  his  aristocracy  will  be  rightly  chosen.  In 
mind  and  attitude,  in  taste  and  in  desire,  they  will  have  all 
that  goes  to  the  making  of  a  brilliant  civilisation.  Such  quali- 
ties it  must  possess  since,  otherwise,  it  will  prove  unacceptable. 
Criticism  of  such  demands  is  as  unnecessary  as  criticism  of 
Bonald's  ideas.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  have  sympathy  with  Bour- 
get's  plea  for  a  restoration  of  the  Catholic  system.'  It  is,  of 
course,  true  that  Catholicism  is  social  and  orderly  and  mystic. 
It  would  assist  his  political  schemes  in  that  it  has  no  room  for 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         187 

divergent  belief.  It  acts  as  the  consolidation  of  faith.  It  ex- 
alts the  heart  over  the  head;  and  Bourget,  like  Bonald,  has 
no  doubt  that  what  comes  from  the  Catholic  heart  is  noble. 
He  demands  the  Catholic  religion  as  a  safeguard  against  the 
disruptiveness  of  rationahsm.^^^  It  will  provide  men  with  a 
sanction  of  self-sacrifice.  Its  hierarchical  organisation  makes 
it  well  fitted  to  stand  sponsor  for  the  monarchical  idea.  It  is 
zealous  for  authority,  it  has  continuity,  it  has  discipline.  For 
the  purpose  of  protecting  his  antiquarian  state  he  could  hardly 
have  chosen  better.  But  the  very  choice  is  simultaneously 
demonstrative  of  M.  Bourget's  failure  to  understand  his  age. 
The  glamour  of  the  theocracy  he  postulates  no  longer  haunts 
the  minds  of  men.  The  worship  of  unity  is  dead.  The  oneness 
we  seek  is  the  oneness  of  effort  and  not  of  purpose.  We  are 
not  willing  to  set  conditions  to  men's  dreams.  We  are  not  de- 
sirous of  returning  to  the  orthodoxy  of  medieval  time.  Tolera- 
tion has  been  the  parent  of  liberalism,  and  liberalism  has  effec- 
tively destroyed  conceptions  of  society  which  leave  no  room  for 
its  innumerable  variations  of  form  and  desire.  With  the  power 
that  monarchy  implies  we  cannot  trust  any  man  in  so  complex 
a  civilisation.  We  cannot  mark  off  class  from  class  in  face  of 
the  social  and  biological  evidence  we  possess.  M.  Bourget  has 
to  account  for  the  structure  of  American  society  and  the  trans- 
formation of  the  English  aristocracy  before  we  can  accept  his 
static  theories. ^^^  The  invitation  he  issues  to  intolerance  an 
age  which  finds  its  surest  guarantee  of  progress  in  the  freedom 
of  the  mind  dare  not  for  a  moment  consider.  Loisy  in  France, 
Tyrell  in  England,  stand  out  as  the  achievements  of  a  democ- 
racy which  has  rejected  the  moral  guarantees  a  rigid  Catholi- 
cism has  proffered.^^^  It  is  otherwhere  we  shall  search  for  new 
hopes. 

XI.  THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  VARIETY 

So  we  are  led  to  the  rejection  of  unity.  And  it  is  worth  while 
to  emphasise  the  grounds  upon  which  we  reject  it.     That  for 

165  Cf.  "Pages  de  Critique,"  Vol.  II,  p.  110  ff. 

16^  The  illogical  character  of  his  "Outre- Mer"  is  one  of  the  strangest  of 
M.  Bourget's  many  inconsistencies;  for  the  aristocracy  he  found  there 
is  barely  fifty  years  old. 

i^'  Cf .  the  essay  on  Lamennais  below. 


188        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

which  we  are  concerned  is  the  preservation  of  individuality. 
It  is  fifty  years  since  John  Stuart  Mill  pointed  out  its  relation 
to  human  improvement.^^  Certainly  if  there  is  one  truth  to 
which  all  history  bears  witness  it  is  that  unity  is  the  parent  of 
identity.  But  it  is  almost  an  equal  commonplace  that  where 
men  seek  the  ease  and  sloth  of  uniformity  they  are,  in  fact,  if 
unconsciously,  attaining  the  bitterness  of  stagnation.  That  was 
the  error  of  the  Eastern  world.  It  was  the  secret  which  the 
great  thinkers  of  Greece  taught  us  by  their  example  to  avoid. 
It  is  particularly  important  at  this  hour  to  prevent  so  grave 
a  disaster.  Democracy  has  made  termendous  progress  in  this 
generation.  But  the  destruction  of  social  and  political  privi- 
lege has  a  fatal  tendency  to  extend  itself  into  the  sphere  of 
mind.  It  is,  indeed,  difficult  for  a  state  at  once  to  accept 
difference  of  opinion  and  to  be  effective  as  a  striking  unit. 
But  that,  after  all,  is  the  price  we  pay  for  our  achievement  of 
freedom.  Nor  is  it  unessential  to  insist  upon  its  worth.  "Man- 
kind," says  Mill  in  a  famous  sentence,^^^  "speedily  become 
unable  to  conceive  diversity  when  they  have  been  for  some  time 
unaccustomed  to  see  it."  To  establish  the  singleness  of  politi- 
cal sovereignty  is  cert(^inly  to  assist  in  its  suppression.  PoHti- 
cal  reality  is  never  at  bottom  single,  and  there  is  no  right 
purpose  in  its  coercion  to  unity.  Let  the  mind  once  bow  itself 
to  that  yoke,  and  truth,  at  a  bound,  is  sacrificed  to  comfort. 
Thus  to  submit  to  the  pressure  of  a  peace  that  must  inevitably 
be  temporary  is,  indeed,  the  subtlest  form  of  self-indulgence. 
Thought  is  by  nature  revolutionary,  and  to  the  consequence 
of  a  great  idea  it  is  obvious  we  can  set  no  limit.  But,  after  all, 
thought  is  the  one  weapon  of  tried  utility  in  a  difficult  and 
complex  world.  If  it  is  to  be  effective  we  must  place  power  in 
its  hands;  for  to  withdraw  from  it  the  means  of  active  exertion 
is  to  blunt  its  effort  after  good.  Therein,  it  is  clear,  the  dis- 
tribution of  sovereignty  is  involved.  Yet  the  forces  that  make 
against  our  progress  are  so  great  that  it  is  hardly  less  than 
treason  to  our  heritage  thus  to  deprive  ourselves  of  what  serv- 
ice thought  may  render.  Nothing,  at  any  rate,  is  so  certain 
to  make  our  corporate  life  devoid  of  its  richness  and  its  elevation. 

">s  "Liberty,"  Chapter  III. 
^^^Ibid.  (Everyman's  cd.),  p.  131. 


CHAPTER    THREE 

LAMENNAIS 
I.    THE  PROBLEM  OF  LAMENNAIS 

THE  enigma  of  Lamennais  remains  still  a  problem  for  those 
who  seek  to  probe  the  secret  of  the  human  mind.^  The 
winds  of  controversy  that  so  sorely  swept  his  troubled 
life  even  yet  are  far  from  stilled.  To  many,  he  remains  the  arch- 
apostate  of  the  nineteenth  century ;  and  to  them,  his  abandon- 
ment of  behefs  for  which  he  had  at  one  time  so  stoutly  fought 
is,  without  exception,  the  greatest  treason  of  which  we  have 
evidence.^  He  did  not,  like  Newman,  live  to  receive  the  homage 
of  his  friends,  even  while  he  retained  the  respect  of  those  who 
rejected  his  philosophic  outlook.  He  did  not,  like  Tyrrell, 
create  in  his  death  a  reformation  of  which,  even  now,  the  con- 
sequence can  be  but  dimly  conceived.  It  was  by  hard  and 
tortuous  thought  that  he  abandoned  the  beliefs  of  his  youth; 
and  those  on  whose  affection  his  life  had  been  founded,  left  him 
to  an  end  of  which  the  proud  courage  could  not  conceal  the 
lonely  despair.^ 

There  is  a  sense,  indeed,  in  which  his  career  is  little  less  than 
the  mirror  of  his  age.  For  the  course  of  his  life  represents  not 
merely  the  reaction  of  Catholicism  fi'om  the  destructive  assault 
of  the  French  Revolution,  but  also  the  dawning  perception  in 
the  minds  of  able  men  that  when  due  rejection  of  its  errors  has 
been  achieved,  it  still  embodied  political  truth  which  is  funda- 
mental to  the  creative  understanding  of  modern  life.'*  The  high- 
priest  of  the  Catholic  reaction,  it  was  his  fortune,  partly,  no 

^  I  have  appended  to  this  essay  a  critical  note  on,  the  more  important 
discussions  of  Lamennais. 

-  Cf.  Guillon,  "Histoire  de  la  Nouvelle  Heresie  du  XIX  me  siecle,"  and 
the  work  of  Lamennais'  friend,  Gerbet,  "Reflexions,  sur  la  chute  de  M.de 
Lamennais"  (1838).  Lacordaire's  "Notice  sur  le  retabhssment  en  France 
de  I'ordre  des  Freres  Prgcheurs, "  p.  68  f.  is  in  the  same  tone. 

*  Cf.  the  comment  of  the  Duchesse  de  Dino,  "  .  .  .  .  et  I'abbe  de 
Lamennais  qui  meurt  comme  un  pauvre  chien  aveugle."  Chronique,  Vol. 
IV,  p.  159.     (3  March  1854). 

*  The  paper  below  on  Royer-Collard  endeavours  to  illustrate  this  thesis. 


190        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

doubt,  by  what  he  wrote,  but,  above  all,  by  what  he  was  and 
what  he  symbolised,  to  forge  the  mightiest  weapon  in  its  undoing. 
By  an  intellectual  evolution  of  which  it  is  difficult  to  deny  the; 
logic,^  he  came  to  argue  that  all  for  which  in  his  earlier  days  he 
had  stood  as  so  passionately  the  protagonist,  was  out  of  accord 
with  the  need  of  his  time.  Little  enough  is  left  now  of  the  great 
edifice  he  so  laboriously  constructed.  Pages,  indeed,  there  are 
in  his  work  of  which  Renan  said^  that  no  more  brilliant  anthol- 
ogy exists  than  that  which  could  be  gathered  from  it.  But  his 
books  are  no  longer  read;^  for  they  were  written  essentially  for 
a  series  of  specific  situations  and  the  great  work  he  dreamed  of 
writing  he  did  not  live  to  complete. 

Yet  he  remains  as  the  champion  of  two  mighty  causes  which 
still  battle  for  the  empire  of  the  mind.  The  eternal  struggle 
between  order  and  liberty  has  received  no  more  arresting  em- 
bodiment than  in  his  own  febrile  and  tormented  soul.  The 
memory  that  remains  not  even  the  dull  weight  of  time  can,  in 
the  result,  deprive  of  its  fascination.  He  strove  to  answer  prob- 
lems of  which  we  are  still  searching  the  solution.  If  we  now 
state  them  differently,  their  fundamental  content  has  in  no 
sense  been  altered.  That  he  wrote  in  an  age  before  theology 
had  been  made  scientific^  has  in  no  wise  disturbed  the  basic 
principles  of  his  plea.  That  he  did  not  grasp  the  true  basis  of 
the  democratic  faith  hardly  weakens  the  argument  he  made  on 
its  behalf.  He  stood  at  the  parting  between  two  worlds.  He 
strove  to  arrest  the  onset  of  forces  he  was  at  the  last  driven  to 
recognise  as  irresistible.  It  is  the  dramatic  quality  of  his  chal- 
lenge to  those  whom  he  had  so  splendidly  led  which  gives  him 
in  the  nineteenth  century  a  place  at  once  exceptional  and  im- 
portant. He  dare  not  be  forgotten  so  long  as  men  are  willing  to 
examine  the  principles  upon  which  their  life  is  founded.  For 
few  have  faced  so  courageously  the  difficulties  of  existence. 
None  has  suffered  more  nobly  in  the  effort  to  confound  them. 

^  Cf.  Janet,  "Philosophie  de  Lamennais,"  p.  56  f. 

*  "Essais  dc  Morale  ct  de  critique."  M.  Mar^chal  has  edited  such  an 
anthology  for  his  strictly  ultramontane  years. 

^  Most  of  them  are  now  unprocurable  except  by  accident. 

*  Renan  has  emphasised  the  significance  of  his  lack  of  a  critical  sjoirit. 
"Essais  de  Morale  et  de  Critique,"  p.  154. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         I'Jl 

II.    THE  CHURCH  IN  THE  NAPOLEONIC  AGE 

He  had  grown  to  manhood  in  the  most  complex  and  troubled 
age  the  church  had  known  since  the  cataclysm  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  If  the  papacy  had  refused  to  make  of  itself  the  un- 
questioning instrument  of  Napoleon's  purpose,  it  could  not 
withstand  the  fury  of  his  onset.  He  had  proclaimed  himself  the 
protector  of  the  ideas  of  1682,^  and  the  principles  of  clerical 
nationalism  were  invoked  to  justify  an  Erastian  regime.  Napo- 
leon, in  fact,  looked  upon  the  church  as  no  more  than  an  effective 
political  weapon,^"  and  thereby  he  gave  to  ultramontanism  a 
new  reason  for  existence.  A  church  which  lay  at  the  heel  of  a 
military  adventurer  must  search  out  afresh  the  foundations  of 
its  being.  The  localism  upon  which  it  had  built  so  much  seemed, 
in  the  result,  likely  to  prove  fatal  to  its  sense  of  tradition  and 
of  personality.  It  was  not  unnatural  that  those  who  were  at- 
tached to  it  by  the  closest  of  personal  ties  should  turn  from  the 
old  Gallican  theories  to  principles  which  seemed  to  give  it  a 
wider  basis  for  its  claim  to  freedom.  Sons  of  France  its  priests 
might  be:  but,  above  all,  they  were  citizens  of  a  religious  so- 
ciety. To  own  allegiance  to  one  who  persecuted  their  church 
was  to  admit  that  the  ecclesiastical  power  was  inferior  to  the 
secular.  But  that  involved  the  betrayal  of  a  fundamental 
tradition.  It  seemed,  too,  to  suggest  that  the  events  of  which 
Napoleon  was  the  symbol  had  won  from  them  an  adherence 
that  was  logically  impossible. ^^  They  dare  not  reconcile  them- 
selves with  the  Revolution.^2  Many  of  them  it  had  sent  to  the 
scaffold;  many  were  in  exile.  Of  those  who  remained  in  France 
not  the  least  part  had  refused  to  take  oaths  which  seemed  to 
them  the  denial  of  their  faith.  For  them,  the  church  was  itself 
a  state,  and  they  would  not  bargain  over  the  nature  of  their 
citizenship  with  an  organisation  hostile  to  its  purposes.  And 
of  that  revolution.  Napoleon  was  the  heir.  If  he  had  restored 
a  clerical  order,  it  was  clear  that  he  did  not  love  it.    The  Pope 

9  Nielsen,  "History  of  the  Papacy  in  the  XlXth  Century,"  I,  317. 

1"  Ibid.,  I,  223  f . 

^^  Cf.  the  speech  of  Pius  VI  printed  in  Theiner's  "Documents,"  I,  p.  1  f. 

^  In  this  aspect  it  is  important  to  remember  that  the  Concordat  of  ISOl 
was  in  truth  an  ultramontane  victory  and  was  generally  so  regarded.  Cf . 
Debidour,  "L'EgUse  et  L'Etat,"  p.  210  f. 


192        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

was  a  prisoner  in  his  hands.  Many  of  the  cardinals  were  in 
captivity;  and  those  who  stood  by  his  purposes  were  no  more 
than  the  weak  creatures  of  his  defiant  ambition. ^^  What,  above 
all,  Napoleon  taught  the  church  was  the  impossibility  of  re- 
maining a  function  of  the  state.  It  must  work'  out  again  the 
principles  of  its  freedom.  It  must  re-establish  its  separateness 
that  it  might  regain  its  purity.  A  church  could  not  claim  cath- 
olicity if  it  became  the  instrument  of  a  single  and  jealous  power. 
Nor  did  Napoleon  render  it  the  homage  of  an  unique  affection. 
To  Jew  and  Catholic,  to  Protestant  and  Mohammedan  he 
proffered  his  goodwill  indifferently.  But  in  the  credo  of  the 
Roman  Church  such  toleration  found  no  place.  A  new  syn- 
thesis was  required  if  it  was  to  be  true  to  its  ancient  heritage. 

So  it  was  that  men  began  to  turn  their  minds  to  the  task  of 
its  reconstruction.  In  that  mission  which  was  in  truth  the  most 
tragic  of  exiles,  De  Maistre  was  forging  the  new  weapons  of  a 
regenerated  papacy."  Bonald  had  already  asserted  in  his 
tremendous,  if  tedious  syllogisms,  the  old  dogmas  of  the  ancient 
conflict  between  Rome  and  an  earlier  empire.  The  new  ultra- 
montanism,  indeed,  was  no  more  than  a  different  aspect  of  the 
old.  Nor  was  what  it  preached  absent  from  the  hearts  of  thou- 
sands, even  if  the  iron  hand  of  Napoleon's  crafty  minister 
stifled  it  at  the  utterance. ^^  But  de  Maistre  and  Bonald  were 
concerned  less  w^ith  the  church  than  with  the  state.  If  each 
adopted  the  theocratic  solution  it  was  not  because  they  realised, 
a  priori,  that  the  starting-point  of  inquiry  must  be  the  Tightness 
of  ecclesiastical  control.  They  approached  the  problem  as 
statesmen,  and  their  establishment  of  the  papal  sovereignty 
was,  for  them,  less  a  principle  than  an  induction.  It  was  from 
the  tremendous  experience  of  an  age  so  full  as  to  make  the 
previous  generation  already  antiquity  that  they  wont  back  to 
Rome  as  to  the  parent  of  all  social  order.  They  urged  the  neces- 
sity of  an  ultramontane  policy  rather  as  an  effective  supple- 
ment to  other  means  than  as  itself  the  basis  of  all  things.    Loy- 

'^  Though  Maury,  of  course,  had  great  talents. 

"  I  have  discussed  De  Maistre's  solution  of  the  problem  of  the  Revo- 
lution in  the  previous  volume  of  these  studies. 

"For  FouchS's  work  as  censor  see  D'Haussonville,  "L'Eglise  Romaine 
ct  le  premier  Empire,"  passim. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         193 

alty  to,  and  passion  for  its  splendor  they  of  course  in  no  sense 
lacked.  But  what  was  needed  was  a  philosopher  who  should 
speak  in  the  name  of  the  Church,  and  deny  the  principles  of  the 
Revolution  solely  as  the  servant  of  its  claims.  If  Bonald  and 
de  Maistre  served  that  end,  it  was  the  accident  of  good  fortune 
rather  than  of  design.  But  it  was  in  the  name  of  the  Church 
that  Lamennais  came  to  do  batne^with  the  Revolution,  to  deny 
its  principles  and  to  refute  its  purposes.  He  came  to  vindicate 
the  church  from  the  trammels  of  state-control.  For  secular 
politics  he  had  no  interest.  It  was  religion  alone  which  held 
his  allegiance.  With  the  state,  with  Napoleon,  he  in  no  con- 
scious sense  concerned  himself, ^^  save  insofar  as  they  affected 
the  subject  of  his  enquiry.  How  to  regain  for  the  church  her 
ancient  sway  over  the  minds  oT  men,— this  and  this  only  was 
his  problem.  It  was  in  the  answer  he  made  that  he  created  the 
Roman  Church  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

He  was  a  child  of  the  Breton  country,  and  his  family  inherited 
the  simple  loyalties  of  that  primitive  race.^^  But  Lamennais, 
from  the  outset,  was  different.  His  temperament  was  morose, 
and  the  fits  of  nervous  anger  to  which  he  was  liable  account, 
in  some  sort,  for  the  solitude  of  his  childhood.  Books  and  the 
sea  were  his  main  companions,  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  he 
retained  a  passionate  affection  for  the  wild  coast  of  Brittany. 
Away  from  it,  indeed,  he  was  never  really  happy,  and  once,  in 
Paris,  he  compared  himself  to  those  exiles  who  sat  down  in 
ancient  days  by  Babylonian  waters.^^  He  read  much  and 
widely;  and  it  is  difficult  to  doubt  that  his  early  acquaintance 
with  Rousseau  and  Voltaire  must  in  some  degree  have  influ- 
enced his  mind.^^  His  own  theories  on  education,  indeed,  show 
distinct  traces  of  the  influence  of  Emile;'^'^  but  the  pressure  of 
events  must  have  effaced  the  early  impression  of  such  dis- 
turbing thoughts.  It  was  to  his  family  that  priests  fled  from 
the  persecutions  of  the  Jacobins,  and  in  their  house  that  they 

'^  Note,  however,  the  eulogistic  passage  in  the  "Reflexions  sur  I'Etat  de 
I'EgHse,"  p.  21. 

"  Lamennais's  ancestry  has  been  copiously  studied  by  M.  Mar6chal  in 
his  "La  famille  de  Lamennais"  (1913). 

1^  SpuUer,  "Lamennais,"  p.  27. 

1^  Cf.  Duine,  "Notes  de  Lamennais"  (1907). 

^^  "Correspondance"  (ed.  Forgues),  i,  61. 


194        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

celebrated,  at  dead  of  night  a  mass  the  more  sweet  because  it 
was  surrounded  by  dangcr.^^  It  is  not  difficult  to  understand 
how  firm  an  impression  such  scenes  should  have  imprinted  on 
his  mind;  nor  can  one  hesitate  to  trace  to  them  the  secret  of 
his  hatred  for  the  Revolution  and  its  works. 

But  though  he  was  deeply  attached  to  the  Catholic  faith,  he 
did  not  shrink  from  questioning  it;  and  it  was  not  until  the  age 
of  twenty-two  that  he  made  his  first  communion.22  That  the 
erosion  of  his  doubts  was  mainly  the  work  of  his  brother  it  is 
not  difficult  to  assume;  and  once  they  had  passed  Lamennais 
was  able  to  accept  the  dogmas  of  his  faith  not  merely  in  full 
sincerity  but  with  some  surprise  that  he  had  ever  doubted 
them.23  But  that  early  hesitation  is  important,  because  it 
shows  that  his  attachment  to  Catholicism  was  never  unthinking. 
If,  at  the  behest  of  his  brother,  he  plunged  into  the  bottomless 
abyss  of  theological  apologetics,  he  still,  even  at  this  time,  had 
a  deep  affection  for  Plato  and  Malebranche,  for  Cicero  and 
Montaigne.  We  know  too  little,  indeed,  of  these  early  years 
to  do  more  than  vaguely  guess  at  their  intellectual  nature. ^^ 
Royalist  he  was,  of  course,  by  inheritance.  Catholic  he  could 
not  fail  to  be  in  the  sense  that  he  accepted  it  as  superior  to  all 
other  religions.  Yet  there  is  no  trace  of  fanaticism  in  his  atti- 
tude, and  the  one  certain  passion  which  these  years  evoked  was 
a  hatred  of  the  University  in  no  degree  traceable  to  any  save 
personal  causes.^^  The  real  starting-point  of  his  religious  adven- 
ture came  in  1807  when  he  went  with  his  brother  to  the  little 
house  at  La  Chenaie  which  was  their  joint  inheritance.  Jean 
Lamennais  had  only  one  object  in  life,  the  service  of  his  church; 
and  his  indefatigable  energy  spurred  on  the  undertaking  of  a 
common  task.  The  result  was  the  appearance,  in  1808,  of  a 
joint-work  on  the  condition  of  the  Church.  That  is  the  true 
beginning  of  his  career  as  a  servant  of  ultramontanism. 

We  do  not,  of  course,  know  how  much  of  this  early  work  is 

^^  Cf.  SpuUer,  op.  cil.,  p.  35. 

22  The  story  of  these  early  difficulties  is  fully  traced  in  Mar^chal,  "La 
Jeunesse  de  Lamennais,"  pp.  31-87. 

23  Cf.  Laveille,  "Vie  de  J.  M.  de  Lamennais,"  I,  47-8. 

^*  One  cannot  help  feeling  that  M.  Mar^chal's  fine  book  is  marred  exactly 
by  this  assumption  of  a  logical  sequence  in  Laraennais's  ideas. 
2^  Spuller,  op.  cil.,  p.  G7. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         195 

the  product  of  Lamennais'  own  thought.  That  it  enshrines 
much  hard  work  on  the  part  of  his  brother  is  clearly  unques- 
tionable; and  in  the  fact  that  Lamennais  himself  refused  it  a 
place  in  his  collected  works,26  is  perhaps  evidence  that  he  did 
not  regard  himself  as  its  principal  author.^^  Certain  it  is,  how- 
ever, that  it  contains  no  doctrine  which  he  would  in  his  Catholic 
days  have  disavowed.  Already  its  one  clear  effort  is  for  the 
advancement  of  the  church.  Already  he  has  a  vivid  sense  of 
its  corporate  independence.  Just  as  the  experience  of  political 
pressure  led  Newman  to  the  passionate  denunciation  of  Eras- 
tianism,^*  so  does  Lamennais'  dislike  of  ecclesiastical  subjection 
lead  him  to  demand  an  extensive  cleric  freedom.  He  stands 
at  the  outset  as  the  avowed  champion  of  its  extreme  claims, 
and  he  seems  to  enter  the  hst  as  a  knight  who  will  encounter 
all  adversaries  with  gladness.  It  is  not  a  book  of  criticism  but 
of  assertion.  It  does  not  argue;  it  only  pretends  to  refute. 
It  is  simply  a  statement  of  principles  made  on  the  assumption 
that  they  are  axiomatic  in  character.  It  attacks  the  heresies 
from  which  the  church  has  suffered.  It  paints  in  vehement 
colours  the  evils  of  Uberty  of  thought.^^  It  derides,  almost  with 
passion,  the  incompetence  of  the  human  mind.  The  whole 
achievement  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  dismissed  with  bitter 
contempt.  The  church  is  pictured  as  standing  where  it  stood 
after  the  civil  wars  of  the  sixteenth  century.  What  is  needed 
is  a  new  effort  after  freedom.  The  church  must  be  released 
from  the  meddling  of  Jansenist  magistrates.^"  There  must  be 
an  end  of  the  deadly  egoism  of  the  philosophers.^^  What  can 
be  hoped  where  the  Revolution  has  spoiled,  and  the  Directory 
persecuted.^2  jf  yf^HYi  Napoleon  the  Concordat  has  come  that 
is  the  beginning  and  not  the  end  of  virtue.^'  Not  until  the 
church  is  restored  to  the  fullness  of  omnicompetent  power  is 

^^  "Correspondence"  (ed.  Forgues),  i,  10. 

^'  This  would  seem  the  net  result  of  M.  Marechal's  laborious  researches. 
Cf   his  "Jeunesse  de  Lamennais,"  Bk  II,  Ch.  1. 
2»  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  Ch.  III. 
"  "Reflexions,"  p.  49. 

30  Ibid.,  p.  59  f. 

31  Ibid.,  46-59. 

32  Ibid.,  67  eO. 
"  Ibid.,  95-100. 


196        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

there  real  hope  for  its  future.  What  is  needed  is  a  regenerated 
clergy  -which,  now  that  the  storm  shows  signs  of  passing,  can 
attempt  the  work  of  reconstruction.  The  life  of  the  church 
must  be  renewed  in  all  its  richness.  The  corporate  vigour  of 
its  institutions  must  be  restored. ^^  In  scholarship  and  in 
education  it  must  resume  its  leadership  and  its  control.^^  The 
enemies  are  indifference  and  atheism,  and  without  knowledge 
they  cannot  be  combated. ^^  The  book  is  clearly  a  programme; 
and  it  is  interesting  to  note  how  admirably  it  fits  into  the  effort 
of  his  liberal  years.  But  it  is  also,  on  the  whole,  a  moderate 
book,  nor  does  it,  save  by  implication,  attack  the  Napoleonic 
settlement.  Rather  does  it,  not  without  much  shrewdness, 
suggest  the  inevitable  lines  upon  which  that  settlement  must 
develop.  Congregations  are  to  be  increased,  missions  are  to 
be  multiplied,  the  faith  more  stoutly  avowed.  He  was  propos- 
ing, in  fact,  a  church  that  should  be  worthy  of  the  empire. 
But  that  innovation  must  have  been  unacceptable  to  the  im- 
perial plans;  for  the  book  was  confiscated  by  the  police  imme- 
diately on  its  appearance.  The  Pope  had  just  hurled  his 
excommunication  at  the  empire,  and  it  was  no  time  to  think 
of  Catholic  freedom.^^ 

It  is  probably  from  that  confiscation  that  Lamennais'  hatred 
of  Gallicanism  is  perhaps  most  certainly  to  be  traced.  It 
suggested  to  him  that  a  strong  church  was  not  desirable  to  the 
emperor.  Napoleon  desired  to  keep  it  in  its  chains;  and  he 
boasted  of  their  connection  with  the  national  tradition .^^  La- 
mennais could  then  but  draw  the  conclusion  that  the  result  of 
Gallicanism  was  the  subjection  of  the  church,  and  that  only  in 
its  abandonment  could  freedom  be  found.  There  is  not,  it  is 
true,  anything  in  the  "Reflexions"  directly  incompatible  with 
Gallican  doctrine.  But  the  events  of  Napoleon's  last  years 
were  to  force  Lamennais  to  the  conviction  that  a  free  church 
must  henceforth  mean  a  Roman  church,  and  he  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  draw  the  inference.     It  is  in  the  light  of  this  attitude 

''Ibid.,  116-34. 
'*/6id.,  134-42. 
'^Ibid.,  142-50. 
"  Dcbidour,  op.  cil.  263. 
's  Ihid.,  275. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         197 

that  the  study  of  episcopal  origins  is  probably  to  be  explained. 
The  difficulties  over  the  papal  confirmation  of  Napoleon's 
nominees  to  the  vacant  bishopries'^  gave  to  such  an  effort  a 
peculiar  importance.  For  to  show  the  direct  dependence  of 
the  bishops  upon  Christ  is  to  argue,  even  if  tacitly,  that  imperial 
interference  is  without  justification.  Apostolic  succession  in- 
volves apostolic  independence;  and  Lamennais  can  urge  that 
when  the  edifice  of  freedom  is  threatened,  the  time  is  not  ripe 
for  concession  to  the  civil  power.'"'  The  church  must  revolve 
on  her  own  axis,  and  that  the  more  proudly  because  of  her 
divine  origin.  The  two  works,  though  they  excited  but  little 
comment — Lamennais  himself  complains  of  the  indifference 
with  which  they  were  received^^ — nevertheless  are  important 
in  that  they  reveal  a  thought  that  is  already  formed.  They 
did  not,  indeed,  bring  him  reputation;  nor  did  they  still  the 
tormenting  doubt  of  his  vocation  which  still  caused  him  deep 
concern.'*^  But  they  gave  him  a  sense  of  his  powers  and  were 
to  prove  the  stimulus  to  further  effort. 

He  had,  already,  in  1809,  been  received  into  minor  orders, 
but  he  found  no  comfort  in  the  thought  of  his  priesthood. 
Already  his  letters  are  full  of  that  bitter  sadness  from  which 
he  never  obtained  release.^-'  "  II  ii'y  a  plus  pour  moi,"  he  wrote,"*^ 
'^d' autre  saison  que  la  saison  des  tempetesf^  and  the  thought 
was  truer  than  he  could  then  have  conceived.  He  was  uncer- 
tain of  his  career.  Moments  of  confidence  were  succeeded  by 
long  periods  of  hesitation  in  which  thinking  and  reading  were 
alike  impossible.^^  The  earnest  efforts  of  his  friends  could 
bring  no  peace  to  his  agitated  mind.  In  1812,  he  seemed  de- 
cided that  the  final  step  must  be  taken  ;^^  but  he  could  not 
bring  himself  to  act  upon  it.  Meanwhile  he  continued  to  write. 
In  1814,  he  published,  just  before  the  Hundred  days  a  passion- 
al Ihid.,  265-8. 

■"^  Cf.  Blaize,  "Oeuvres  Inedites  de  Lamennais,"  I,  lOS. 

*i  SpuUer,  op.  cit.,  p.  55. 

*2  Blaize,  op.  cit.  I,  106. 

*a  Cf.  the  pathetic  letter  printed  in  Roussel,  "Lamennais,"  I,  22  f. 

**  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  I,  107. 

« Ibid.,  I,  89. 

46  Forgues,  "Correspond."  I,  xvi. 


198        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

ate  attack  on  the  university  as  a  servile  instrument  of  the  state. 
He  re-edited  the  ''Tradition  de  I'Eglise"  and  made  it  the 
occasion  of  a  vehement  attack  upon  the  emperor.^'^  He  dreamed 
of  a  journal  which  should  support  the  papal  cause.^^  He 
thought  of  spending  his  days  with  his  brother  in  perpetual 
collaboration.^*  But  the  mood  soon  passed.  Even  the  Res- 
toration gave  him  no  pleasure;  it  was  but  the  exchange  of  a 
strong  tyrant  for  a  feeble  despot.^"  He  disliked  the  antagonism 
of  the  Gallican  bishops  to  Rome/'  Ultramontanism  seemed  to 
him  the  one  sure  means  of  restoring  Catholicism  to  its  rightful 
position  in  France,  So  he  re-edited  his  "Reflexions"  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  make  more  evident  its  Roman  bias.  A  clergy 
with  its  own  means  of  subsistence  obeying  only  the  sovereign 
and  infallible  pontiff  seems  to  him  now  the  one  sure  means  of 
success.^^  It  was  the  begining  of  that  tremendous  assault  which 
sought  to  rewin  for  Rome  the  ancient  dominion  she  had  lost. 

But  the  dream  was  not  to  last.  Napoleon  suddenly  returned 
from  Elba,  and  Lamennais,  convinced  that  he  was  in  personal 
danger,  fled  to  England.  He  found  little  consolation  there.  His 
friendship  with  the  abbe  Carron,  indeed,  strengthened  his  reso- 
lution to  enter  the  priesthood,^^  and  he  seems  even  to  have 
thought  of  a  missionary  enterprise  in  America.  But  Napoleon's 
effort  was  broken  into  pieces  at  Waterloo;  and  Lamennais' 
return  to  France  made  his  path  inevitable. 

But  it  was  with  a  bitter  heart  that  he  strengthened  himself 
for  the  last  step.  There  is  in  his  letters  no  sign  of  any  gladness, 
no  admission  of  any  satisfaction.  Rather  does  it  seem  to  have 
been  a  response  to  the  urgency  of  his  friends.  If  it  caused  him 
anguish,  they  seemed  even  happy  that  he  should  be  thus  given 
so  splendid  an  opportunity  of  self-sacrifice.^"*  He  was  almost 
dragged  to  the  altar  by  his  brother  and  the  abb(5  Carron;   and 

"  See  esp.  "Tradit.,"  II,  306-8.  M.  Mardchal  places  their  composition  in 
1813.    "Jeunesse  de  Lamennais,"  p.  423. 

"  Blaize,  i,  136. 

^9  Blaize,  I,  168. 

"  Ibid.,  1,  1.50. 

"  Ibid.,  1,  170. 

62  "Reflexions"  (ed.  of  1814),  p.  96. 

'•^  Bluize,  op.  cit.,  I,  21.'). 

"  Ibid.,  I,  259. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         199 

there  is  no  single  fact  to  contradict  the  view  that  his  decision 
was  in  truth  wrung  from  him  against  his  will.^^  Nor  is  it  less 
certain  that  for  him  the  step  seemed  to  end  all  prospect  of  his 
happiness.'^^  But  it  was,  at  any  rate,  a  decision,  and  from  the 
knowledge  that  it  was  irrevocable  he  may  have  derived  some 
comfort.  Henceforth,  he  was  dedicated  to  the  church  and  it  was 
his  function  to  do  honour  to  her  service.  It  was  partly  to  drown 
the  memory  of  his  pain,  partly,  perhaps,  that  he  might  by 
work  convince  himself,  that  he  took  up  with  vigour  his  old  po- 
lemic. A  new  era  had  dawned  for  France;  and  it  might  be 
that  he  could  shape  it  to  his  purposes. 

III.  EARLY  ULTRAMONTANISM 

If  the  Bourbon  restoration  seemed  a  triumph  for  the  Catholic 
Church,  it  was,  in  truth,  a  victory  to  which  the  facts  themselves 
had  set  conditions.  It  was  true  that  everywhere  the  union  of 
throne  and  altar  seemed  the  indispensable  condition  of  national 
safety."  Nor  was  it  likely  that  men  who  had  suffered  so  piti- 
able an  exile  would  allow  the  ideals  of  the  Revolution  to  obtain 
political  or  rehgious  expression.  But  two  fundamental  facts 
stood  in  the  way  of  a  restoration  of  the  ancien  regime.  The 
Charter  was  a  guarantee  of  religious  toleration;  without  it 
Louis  XVIII  could  never  have  returned  to  the  French  throne. 
Whatever  privileges  the  Catholic  Church  might,  in  the  future, 
receive,  it  could  not,  as  in  the  past,  be  the  religious  body  to 
which  the  French  State  extended  a  unique  protection.  It  would 
be  compelled  to  endure  the  criticism  of  other  reUgious  societies 
which  were  no  longer  excluded  from  political  existence.  Nor 
was  this  all.  The  Charter  had  pledged  Louis  to  the  irrevoca- 
biUty  of  the  sale  of  those  national  possessions  in  large  part  de- 
rived from  ecclesiastical  confiscation;  and  if  this  meant  any- 
thing it  meant  that  the  restoration  of  church  wealth  would 
depend  upon  the  doubtful  generosity  of  an  almost  bankrupt 
state. 

Nor  was  it  a  united  church  which  returned  to  power.    While 

55  Cf.  Spuller,  op.  cit.,  p.  87. 
58  Cf.  the  tragic  letter  in  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  I,  263. 

5^  See,  for  instance,  the  remarks  of  the  Bishop  of  Troyes  in  "L'Ami  de 
la  rehgion,"  I,  101. 


200        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

men  like  Lamennais  urged  that  ultramontanism  had  been  justi- 
fied by  the  experience  of  the  Revolution,  there  were  not  wanting 
able  and  influential  men  who  insisted  on  the  rectitude  of  Galilean 
theories.  The  French  clergy,  as  a  body,  would  admit  neither 
papal  absolutism  nor  papal  infallibility.^^  They  relied  on  the 
generosity  of  the  crown  as  the  bulwark  of  their  future.  They 
had  no  sympathy  with  the  Romanising  tendencies  of  de  Maistre 
and  of  Bonald.  They  were  satisfied  with  the  regime  of  a  charter 
which,  whatever  its  defects,  had  declared  Catholicism  the  reli- 
gion of  the  state.  They  were  content  to  believe  that  historic 
necessity  would  result  in  the  restoration  of  what  the  Revolution 
had  destroyed.  They  had  none  of  the  intractabihty  of  the 
Petite  Eglise;  they  lacked  the  deep  sense  of  corporate  independ- 
ence by  which  the  Ultramontanes  were  distinguished.  Where 
they  erred  was  in  their  failure  to  perceive  that  the  promises  of 
the  Charter  were  a  fundamental  stumbling-block  in  the  path- 
way of  their  dreams.  Whatever  they  might  in  substance  a- 
chieve — and  of  concessions  they  were  to  have  a  plethora — the 
formal  recognition  of  their  desires  had  become  impossible. 
Louis  XVIII  might  love  to  call  himself  the  eldest  son  of  the 
Church,^^  but  he  was  a  son  who  by  no  means  recognised  the 
patria  potestas.  The  spirit  of  criticism  had  gone  too  far  to  make 
it  possible  for  their  ideas  to  obtain  acceptance.  Their  ambition 
was  bound  up  with  an  age  that  was  past.  The  future  of  the 
Church  lay  with  newer  conceptions." 

It  was  the  signal  merit  of  Lamennais  to  have  perceived,  even 
before  the  Restoration,  that  it  did  not,  in  fact,  promise  real 
hope  for  the  church.^''  The  Revolution  had  taught  him  the 
futility  of  placing  confidence  in  the  state.  He  suspected  its 
motives,  and  he  felt  that  it  was  guilty  of  a  silence  upon  eccle- 
siastical problems  which,  indicated  its  lack  of  identity  with 
the  interests  of  Catholicism.*^^  The  fundamental  problem  was 
the  general  indifference  to  religious  matters  which  character- 
ised the  age.    If  the  temper  of  the  people  remained  profoundly 

^*  Cf.  Frayssinous,  "Les  Vrais  Principes  de  I'Eglise  Gallicane"  (ed. 
of  1826),  p.  89. 

*'  Debidour,  op.  cit.,  p.  332. 

60  Cf.  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  1,  152,  159,  170,  177. 

"  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  i,  201. 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE        201 

Catholic,  it  did  not  find  expression  in  dogmatic  channels.  The 
essential  task  was  to  analyse  the  conditions  of  such  an  attitude 
and  to  attempt  their  remedy.  Chateaubriand  had,  indeed, 
sketched  in  magic  prose  the  glories  of  Christianity;  but  he 
had  conveyed  an  emotion  rather  than  resolved  a  problem.^^ 
What  Lamennais  desired  was  to  indicate  the  means  whereby 
the  Catholic  church  might  regain  its  institutional  integrity. 
It  was  without  reference  to  the  state  that  he  desired  to  write. 
He  would  consider  men  as  members  of  his  church,  and  discuss 
the  terms  upon  which  its  empire  might  be  restored.  The 
"Essay  on  Indifference  in  Matters  of  Religion"  was  published  at 
the  end  of  1817,  and  its  result  was  to  make  Lamennais  the  first 
theologian  in  France.  Forty  thousand  copies  were  sold  in  a 
few  months.^^  The  veteran  de  Maistre  wrote  of  it  with  pas- 
sionate enthusiasm,^^  nor  were  Chateaubriand  and  Bonald 
less  generous  in  their  praise.^*  If  there  were  some  who  detected 
grounds  for  theological  suspicion,  most  men,  as  Lacordaire  has 
told  us,^''  looked  upon  its  author  as  a  new  Bossuet.  Hence- 
forward he  was  the  uncontested  chief  of  the  Ultramontane 
party;  and  the  government  itself  was  anxious  to  win  the 
adherence  of  one  who  had  thus,  in  a  single  day,  attained  so 
notable  a  fame." 

The  plan  of  the  book  is  simple  in  the  extreme.  It  is  an 
attempt  to  show  that  social  salvation  depends  upon  the  su- 
premacy of  Catholicism,  and  it  demands  intolerance  as  the 
price  of  that  victory.  It  is  the  work  of  a  man  disturbed  by  the 
bewildering  lack  of  unity  in  his  time.  Everywhere  there  is 
indifference  to  fundamental  dogma;  everywhere  men  have 
erected  their  system  of  private  alternatives.  On  all  sides  there 
is  an  evident  neglect  of  spiritual  truth.  Reason  and  the  senses 
fight  once  again  their  eternal  combat.  But  the  fight  against 
reason  is  the  fight  against  order  ;*^^   and  the  result  has  been  the 

62  Cf.  Spuller,  op.  cit.,  p.  92. 

63  Boutard,  "Lamennais,"  I,  152. 
"  "Oeuvres,"  XIV,  224. 

65  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  I,  152-4. 

66  "Considerations  sur  le  systeme  philosophique  de  M.  de  Lamennais," 
Ch.  I. 

67  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  I,  285. 

68  "Essai,"  I,  9  (ed.  Cannier). 


202        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

pitiful  lack  of  moral  and  political  certitude.  He  does  not, 
indeed,  claim  that  this  is  a  novel  situation.  Christianity — 
which  for  him  is  the  combination  of  the  spiritual  truths  thus 
far  known  to  man — has  struggled  continuously  to  secure  the 
paramountcy  of  reason.^^  It  fought  the  selfish  interests  of 
imperial  Rome;  it  triumphed  over  the  persecutions  of  the 
decadent  pagans;  the  attacks  of  protestant  sects  revealed  the 
unbreakable  strength  of  its  foundations.  Deism,  atheism, 
philosophy — all  these  have  left  it  unmoved.^'* 

But  the  age  in  which  he  lives  differs  from  its  predecessors  in 
the  contempt  for  all  belief  by  which  it  is  characterised.  La- 
mennais  insists  on  the  danger  of  this  attitude.  Action  is  the 
consequence  of  opinion,  and  when  we  know  the  faith  of  men 
we  can  predict  their  conduct.''^  Every  idea  reacts  upon  the 
social  structure.^2  But  every  doctrine,  being  as  it  is  either 
right  or  wrong,  is  therefore,  of  necessity,  dangerous  or  bene- 
ficial to  the  well-being  of  society.  The  essential  basis  of  an 
adequate  social  order  Christianity  had,  at  any  rate  before  the 
Reformation,  been  able  to  supply.  It  had  given  a  sanction  to 
obedience.  It  had  purified  the  customs  of  men.  From  its 
fountain  the  law  had  drawn  its  strength.^^  But  with  the  Ref- 
ormation there  came  a  change.  It  was  no  longer  admitted  that 
authority  was  the  basis  of  faith,  and  intellectual  libertinism 
had  replaced  it.  The  Divine  reason  had  been  compelled  to 
abdicate,  and  the  human  mind  had  not  shrunk  from  the  sac- 
rilege of  replacement.''^  Each  man  had  become  intellectual 
emperor  over  himself,  and  the  spirit  of  independence  erected 
anarchy  into  a  social  principle.  It  is  obvious  that  society 
cannot  acquiesce  in  its  virtual  annihilation. 

The  indifference  he  castigates  so  passionately  has  taken  dif- 
ferent forms  in  the  life  about  him.  Some  deny  religion  for 
themselves,  but  admit  its  political  value.  They  regard  it  as 
an  admirable  means  of  popular  restraint.^^    But  Lamennais 

69  Ihid.,  p.  11. 

70  Ibid.,  p.  12-18. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  30. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  31. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  33. 
^*  Ibid.,  p.  35. 
"i  IHd.,  Ch.  II. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        203 

has  no  patience  with  this  atheism.  It  cannot,  so  ho  claims, 
account  for  religious  origins.  It  cannot  explain  the  universal 
basis  of  society  in  religion.^^  It  cannot  explain  the  strength 
of  the  religious  sanction  not  less  in  politics  than  in  law."  He 
insists  on  the  evil  of  the  hypocrisy  that  would  force  upon  men 
a  faith  in  fact  untrue.''^  Nor  will  he  admit  the  natural  religion 
of  Rousseau.  Humanity,  he  urges,  has  never  been  content 
with  deism  which  is,  in  fact,  only  the  vestibule  of  atheism.''^ 
It  is  no  more  satisfactory  in  its  social  result,  and  he  cannot  re- 
sist from  heaping  contumely  upon  its  foremost  representative. 
He  does  not,  moreover,  find  Protestantism  any  less  unsatis- 
factory.^" It  is  the  apotheosis  of  rehgious  individualism.  It 
destroys  the  unity  of  the  church.^^  It  has  no  answer  to  those 
who,  like  itself,  take  their  stand  upon  the  teaching  of  scripture.^^ 
It  cannot  have  fundamental  articles — whether  sentiment  or 
unanimity,  or  the  admission  of  decisive  significance.^*  It  in 
fact  denies  the  inspiration  of  God  by  substituting  for  his  guid- 
ance the  results  of  human  interpretation.  But,  as  a  conse- 
quence, it  leads  in  the  end  to  atheism;  for  both  claim  to  speak 
in  the  name  of  reason,  and  they  are  alike  confounded  by  its 
social  inadequacy.^* 

He  had  thus,  in  substance,  denied  the  logic  of  any  attitude 
distinct  from  that  of  Catholicism.  What  he  had  next  to  at- 
tempt was  the  constructive  demonstration  of  its  necessity. 
He  had  to  show  that  religion  was  socially  invaluable,  and  that 
by  religion  could  only  be  understood  the  position  he  himself 
maintained.  The  end  of  man  is  happiness;  but  the  condition 
of  happiness  is  repose.  Here  is  the  first  reason  of  religious 
utility  for  without  it  there  is  no  contentment.*^     Surely  the 

«  "Oeuvres"  (ed.  of  1834),  i,  32. 

"  Ibid.,  34. 

78  Ibid.,  35-8. 

"  Ibid,,  Ch.  IV  and  V. 

8"  Ibid.,  Ch.  VI  and  VII. 

81  Ibid.,  I,  62  f. 

82  "Oeuvres,"  I,  60. 

83  Ibid.,  I,  65  f. 

84  Ibid.,  I,  73  f . 

85  Ibid.,  I,  82. 


204        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

cause  of  such  a  pronouncement  is  to  be  found  in  Lamennais' 
own  troubled  soul.  He  had  gone  into  the  church  that  he 
might  find  peace.  It  was  then  but  natural  that  he  should  in- 
sist upon  its  splendour.  But  repose  can  come  only  when  man 
has  discovered  the  laws  of  his  being.  Without  them  men  cannot 
realise  their  end.  But  those  laws  are  religion  and  it  is  thus 
that  without  religion  men  cannot  attain  their  end.  Philosophy 
is  useless  for  that  purpose.  What  it  does  is  to  make  of  man  a 
God,  and  thus  to  destroy  the  bonds  of  social  existence.^^  That 
is  an  attitude  socially  impossible.  All  that  we  are,  all  truth 
that  we  can  know,  comes  in  its  origin  from  God.*^  We  have 
to  put  trust  in  him  simply  because  from  nowhere  else  is  to  be 
derived  the  certitude  and  faith  which  are  the  conditions  of 
existence.^^  The  result  of  religion  is  thus  to  put  man  in  a 
right  relation  to  his  environment.  It  assures  that  order  and 
fixity  he  so  passionately  desired.  It  centralises  his  life,  and  the 
great  object  of  human  endeavour  must  be  the  discovery  of 
unity.  That,  indeed,  is,  for  him,  the  whole  object  of  order.^* 
To  see  life  in  terms  of  a  single  principle  was  to  see  it  in  the  one 
context  that  is  socially  adequate. 

But  unity  demands  its  conditions.  It  can  only  be  estab- 
lished by  a  system  of  relations.  It  necessitates  the  abolition 
of  interstices.  The  structure  of  society  must  be  monistic.^" 
Lamennais  has  little  difficulty  in  showing  that  this  demands 
an  hierarchical  organisation.  The  individual  must  be  sacri- 
ficed simply  because  he  has  no  interest  except  in  relation  to 
the  larger  whole.  The  real  unit,  in  fact,  is  society  itself  and  man 
becomes  no  more  than  a  fragmentary  moment  of  its  existence.^^ 
But  the  equilibrium  must  be  maintained  and  power  is  its  in- 
strument. It  is,  indeed,  the  fatal  error  of  philosophy  t"hat  it 
destroys  that  power;  for  when  it  proclaims  the  self-mastery 
of  men  it  in  fact  removes  the  foundation  of  authority.     No 

8"  Ibid.,  I,  85. 
8'  Ibid.,  1,  90. 
88  Ibid.,  I,  91. 
83  Ibid.,  I,  97. 
5»  Ibid.,  I,  98. 
"  Ibid. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        205 

one  will,  he  urges,^-  has  any  real  right  to  assert  its  superiority 
over  another.  That  is  the  flaw  in  Rousseau's  social  contract.^^ 
To  make  will  the  basis  of  society  is  at  once  to  admit  anarchy. 
But  to  derive  society  from  God,  to  coerce  its  elements  into 
oneness  by  the  force  of  religion  is  to  find  a  basis  for  the  beliefs 
he  cherished  so  deeply.  It  is  then  not  difficult  to  urge  that 
man  exists  for  the  glory  of  God  and  that  the  perfect  and  eternal 
society  is  that  in  which  the  glory  of  God  is  most  amply  pur- 
sued.^^  The  littleness  of  the  individual  beside  so  infinite  an 
end  is  clear;  and  Lamennais  can  take  comfort  in  the  pain  that 
he  has  suffered  by  the  thought  that  he  in  fact  ministers  to  a 
harmony  to  which  his  very  pain  contributes. 

It  is  here,  moreover,  that  the  church  emerges;  for  man  has 
to  relate  himself  to  God,  and  it  was  through  Christ  that  the 
mediation  was  accomplished.  But  the  fundamental  achieve- 
ment of  Christ  was  the  foundation  of  his  church,^^  and  we  have 
then  the  text  of  the  whole  argument.  For  the  church  was 
clearly  founded  that  Christ  might  preserve  those  rules  of  social 
order  he  had  revealed  in  his  gospel.  When  he  confided  their 
preservation  to  the  church  he  in  fact  entrusted  it  with  the 
government  of  society.  He  made  it  the  vital  link  in  that  sys- 
tem of  relations  which  Lamennais  had  postulated  as  funda- 
mental. That  is  why  the  denial  of  Catholic  sovereignty  is  a 
crime  ;^^  for  it  is  the  denial  through  human  pride  of  an  order 
established  by  God.  All  power,  in  its  origin,  must  then  be 
derived  from  the  church.  It  is  the  guardian  of  social  relation- 
ships. But  the  church  means  Rome,  and  Rome,  as  Lamennais 
was  soon  to  argue,  means  the  Pope.  So  it  was  that  he  went 
back  to  Rome  that  he  might  discover  there  the  lordship  of 
the  world. 

IV.   THE  GLORIFICATION  OF  ROME 

It  is  not  difficult  to  trace  the  origin  of  the  first  section  of  his 
essay.^'    To  Bossuet  and  Pascal  but,  above  all,  to  Bonald,  it 

92  Ibid.,  I,  99. 

« Ibid.,  I,  99. 

9"  Ibid.,  1,  134. 

sf-  Ibid.,  I,  137. 

9«  Ibid.,  I,  139. 

9^  Cf.  M.  Mar^chal's  fine  analysis,  op.  cit.,  577-634. 


206        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

is  immensely  indebted.^^  It  reflects  the  general  reaction  from 
individualism  so  characteristic  of  his  age.  Its  exaltation  of 
authority,  its  insistence  on  philosophy  as  socially  disruptive, 
its  translation  of  man  into  an  entirely  religious  context — these 
are  the  terms  upon  which  Bonald  and  de  Maistre  had  proposed 
to  rebuild  the  world.  Like  them,  even  if  by  impUcation  only,^^ 
it  was  to  Rome  that  he  was  driven  back  for  his  answer.  But 
the  book  is  everywhere  distinguished  by  the  magnificent  orig- 
inality of  its  spirit.  No  one  save  Lamennais  could  have 
written  it  simply  because  it  bears  in  every  line  the  intense 
expression  of  the  bitter  struggle  through  which  he  had  lived. 
His  denial  of  the  importance  of  the  individual  is  simply  the 
self-knowledge  that  he  must  sacrifice  his  ambition  to  the  de- 
mand of  his  friends.  His  picture  of  the  evils  of  philosophy  is 
the  angry  farewell  to  one  of  the  delights  of  his  youth,  the 
attempt  to  convince  himself  that  the  sacrifice  has  been  worth 
the  making.  The  book,  in  fact,  is  essentially  a  personal  docu- 
ment. But  it  is  also  more  than  that.  Its  implications  are  far 
more  significant  than  the  results  it  expressly  declares.  Lamen- 
nais is  laying  the  foundation  of  an  argument  of  which  the  con- 
clusion is  an  ecclesiastical  imperialism  based  upon  independence 
of  the  state.  He  is,  in  truth,  insisting  that  for  centuries  the 
centre  of  world-importance — a  centre,  moreover,  distinguished 
in  his  eyes  by  the  divinity  of  its  origin — has  been  Rome.  In 
that  aspect  it  is  but  a  step  to  the  demonstration  that  the 
ecclesiastical  federalism  in  which  the  Galileans  put  their  trust^"" 
has  no  root  in  historical  reality.  It  subjugates  the  church  to 
the  state.  For  if  power  is  Roman  in  its  derivation,  there  was 
good  ground  for  the  tremendous  claims  of  Gregory  VII,  and 
the  minimising  efforts  of  1682  are  so  much  error.  Such  an 
attitude,  moreover,  has  even  deeper  immediate  significance  for 

^*  Lamennais,  indeed,  speaks  with  immense  admiration  for  the  latter 
throughout  his  work. 

"  It  is  to  be  noted  that  it  was  only  later  final  attack  on  GalHcanism  in 
1825  and  the  following  years  that  Lamennais  expressly  drew  the  obvious 
conclusions  from  the  "Essay  on  Indifference". 

"°  A  federalism,  of  course,  which  goes  back  to  the  conciliar  movement. 
Cf.  Dr.  Figgis'  classic  analysis  in  "From  Gerson  to  Grotius"  passim,  but 
especially  pp.  16,  92. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        207 

the  Franco  of  his  time.  It  condemns  the  Revolution  out  of 
hand.  It  is  the  text-book  of  intolerance,  for  it  proclaims  the 
importance  of  orthodoxy  in  its  liberal  meaning  of  correct  doc- 
trine. That  is,  perhaps,  in  some  sort  due  to  Lamennais'  own 
character.  Whatever  he  believed,  it  was  essential  for  him  to 
believe  wholeheartedly.  He  was  above  all  things  a  great  pam- 
phleteer, and  it  was  thus  fundamental  to  his  work  that  he 
should  be  capable,  granted  his  passionate  temperament,  of 
seeing  but  a  single  side  of  any  problem.  The  vivid  eloquence 
of  the  book  gives  it,  even  after  a  hundred  years,  a  sense  of 
burning  life  which  but  little  literature  of  its  character  possesses. 
"Ce  livre,"  wrote  de  Maistre,^''^  "ce  livre  est  un  coup  de 
tonerre  sous  un  ciel  de  plomb."  But  that  thunderclap  was, 
in  truth,  no  more  than  the  vague  herald  of  the  storm. 

For  a  decade  after  the  publication  of  the  first  part  of  the 
"Essai"  Lamennais,  while  he  was  never  friendly  to  the  French 
state,  was  at  any  rate  not  in  active  opposition  to  it.  Nor  is 
the  reason  far  to  seek.  If  the  Bourbons  did  not  yield  to  the 
enormous  pretensions  of  the  church  there  was  always  hope  of 
their  surrender.  The  history  of  the  Restoration,  indeed,  is 
little  more  than  a  continuous  effort  of  the  church  to  capture 
the  political  machinery  of  France.  If  too  much  was  not  to  be 
expected  from  Louis  XVIII — after  all  a  good-humoured  sceptic 
of  the  eighteenth  century^"- — it  was  known  that  his  heir  dreamed 
of  nothing  save  a  return  to  the  golden  days  of  the  ancien  regime. 
And  even  Louis  was  willing  to  do  much  to  efface  the  results 
of  the  Revolution.  The  Concordat  of  1817,  whatever  the 
defects  of  its  application  was,  after  all,  a  great  victory  for  the 
church.  An  extensive  attack  was  launched  against  the  uni- 
versity— in  a  sense  not  the  least  fundamental  of  all  Revolu- 
tionary institutions. ^°^  The  Jesuits  came  out  of  their  hiding- 
places  and  made  of  the  Rue  du  Bac  a  seat  of  government  which 
challenged   comparison  with  that  of  the  crown. ^"^     Missions 

"1  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  I,  152. 

102  Cf.  Debidour,  op.  cit.,  p.  331. 

"3  It  is  indeed  possible  to  make  the  struggle  for  educational  control 
between  church  and  state  the  central  thread  in  the  history  of  France  since 
the  Revolution.  Cf.  the  admirable  book  of  Grimaud,  "Histoire  de  la 
liberte  d'enseignement"  (1898). 

1"^  Cf.  G.  de  Grandmaison,  "La  Congregation,"  passim. 


208        AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

and  congregations  multiplied  with  extraordinary  rapidity. 
Members  who  sat  on  the  Parliamentary  Commission  which 
examined  the  Concordat  of  1817,  did  not  hesitate,  as  a  duty, 
to  inform  the  Pope  of  its  proceedings. '°^  When  it  became  clear 
that  the  project,  in  its  original  form,  did  not  meet  with  the 
approval  of  the  Chamber,  its  amelioration  was  effected  by  an 
act  of  grace  from  Rome  and,  even  then,  not  through  the  ordi- 
nary diplomatic  channels,  but  by  a  representation  to  the 
French  government  by  the  Grand  Almoner  of  the  French 
church. 1°''  When  the  Concordat  of  1817  was  finally  abrogated, 
the  clergy  did  not  hesitate  to  stigmatize  a  ministry  of  which, 
from  its  own  point  of  view,  the  sole  fault  was  surely  no  more 
than  weakness,  as  atheist  in  character. ^"^  Men  like  Bonald 
even  affirmed  that  the  creation  of  new  bishoprics — in  part,  at 
least,  a  financial  matter — depended  not  at  all  upon  the  wishes 
of  the  Chamber,  but  entirely  upon  negotiation  between  Louis 
and  Rome.^^^  When  Richelieu  resigned  in  1821,  it  was  per- 
missible to  doubt  whether  the  state  had  not  been  reduced  to 
the  police  department  of  the  church. 

It  was  as  a  journalist  fighting  for  these  ends  that  Lamennais 
is  remarkable  in  these  years.  But  he  was  clearly  dissatisfied 
with  the  hesitations  of  the  government.^"^  He  seems  to  have 
considered  that  the  end  of  its  weakness  must  be  a  new  and  more 
terrible  revolution.  So  that  he  was  not  illogical  in  giving  his 
support  to  those  who  were  fighting  for  the  most  extreme  claims 
the  church  could  put  forward. '^^  But  association  with  Villete 
and  Chateaubriand  inevitably  meant  the  confusion  of  religious 
with  political  ends,  and  upon  the  latter  Lamennais  had  no 
opinions.  It  is  clear,  moreover,  that  Lamennais  disliked  the 
use  of  religion  as  a  poUtical  weapon.  The  extreme  Right  had, 
after  all,  ends  to  serve  which  made  the  religious  question  only 
a  single  aspect  of  its  policy;    nor  was  he  certain  that  in  those 

"^  Dcbidour,  op.  cit.,  353. 
"6  Ibid.,  355. 
1"  Ibid.,  357. 
los  Ibid.,  361. 

»"»  Cf.  the  letter  of  November  10,  181'.»,  to  Henoit  D'Azy  Laveille,  op.  cit. 
p.  83. 

"0  Cf .  Boutard,  1,  170. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         209 

other  aspects  he  agreed  with  its  aims.  He  had  already  come 
to  regard  opposition  to  the  political  results  of  the  Revolution 
as  impossible.*^^  His  own  thought  was  almost  exclusively  oc- 
cupied with  very  different  things. 

What,  obviously,  he  was  trying  to  do  was  to  work  out  the 
principles  upon  which  the  French  church  could  be  regarded 
as  itself  a  state — or  rather  part  of  the  Roman  Catholic  state — 
of  which  the  French  government  must  not  diminish  the  sover- 
eign rights.  He  denies,  for  example,  the  right  of  the  Minister 
of  the  Interior  to  ask  for  account  of  its  charitable  donations ;i^2 
that  is  simply,  for  him,  the  irrelevance  of  unnecessary  despot- 
ism. He  insists  that  Gallican  doctrine  is  subversive  of  the 
government  of  the  church;  and  to  postulate  the  inferiority  of 
the  Pope  to  the  canon  law  he  identifies  with  a  spirit  of  license 
and  rebellion."'  He  admits  that  the  exercise  of  the  clerical 
function  is  essential  to  the  welfare  of  the  state;  but  he  is 
anxious  for  the  church  to  build  up,  by  means  of  foundations, 
its  own  revenues  rather  than  depend  upon  official  subvention. ^^^ 
He  wishes  to  free  the  sacrament  of  marriage  from  its  connexion 
with  the  civil  law;  for  the  marriage  of  Catholics  concerns  only 
the  church  which  does  not  extend  the  admission  of  legitimacy 
to  any  other  act  of  union, "^  He  seeks  to  free  the  observance 
of  Sunday  from  any  reasons  that  are  not  purely  religious  in 
character."^  When  a  Protestant  is  prosecuted  for  his  failure 
to  place  a  carpet  before  his  house  on  the  occasion  of  a  religious 
procession,  Lamennais  agrees  with  the  accused  that  the  ex- 
tension of  toleration  under  the  charter  releases  the  state  from 
any  attempt  to  assist  the  church."^  The  state,  he  insists,  is 
now  non-religious  in  character,  and  where  there  is  not  complete 
fusion  it  is  necessary  that  there  should  be  the  recognition  of 
complete  independence.  So  the  civil  authority  may  not  force 
upon  the  church  the  burial  of  those  who  have  violated  its  laws."^ 

"1  Laveille,  op.  cit.,  p.  94,  letter  of  March  2,  1820. 

"2  "Oeuvres,"  I,  604. 

"3  "Oeuvres,"  I,  606. 

1"  "Oeuvres,"  I,  614. 

i'5  "Oeuvres,"  I,  616-23. 

"6  Ihid.,  I,  625. 

1"  Ihid.,  I,  626. 

"8 /bid.,  I,  618. 


210        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

The  church  has  its  own  code  of  legislation  and  its  self-suffi- 
ciency must  be  recognised."^  From  the  principles  of  religious 
freedom  that  the  charter  has  consecrated  he  draws  the  inference 
that  the  right  to  form  associations  is  fundamental;  for  without 
them  the  Catholic  chm-ch  cannot  prosper.^-''  Because  man  be- 
longs to  two  societies,  the  religious  and  the  civil,  his  education 
is  the  function  of  both  aHke;i2i  j^^^  j^q  denies  that  government 
can  in  any  sense  act  as  the  controlling  agent  in  the  process. 
The  real  decision  must  rest  with  the  family,  whose  rights  in 
this  aspect  no  govermnent  may  invade.^--  Clearly  he  is  seek- 
ing to  make  of  the  allegiance  of  men  to  his  church  a  thing  in 
nowise  distinct  from  that  which  the  state  may  demand. 

Nor  is  other  proof  of  this  attitude  lacking.  His  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Concordat  of  1817  casts  a  special  illumination  upon 
his  doctrines.  The  royal  nomination  to  the  bishoprics  it  estab- 
lished he  looks  upon  as  the  concession  made  of  grace  by  one 
sovereign  to  another.^^a  j^  would,  in  his  view,  be  impossible 
for  the  Chamber  to  create  bishoprics  or  to  define  their  functions. 
"Un  pareil  pouvoir,"  he  declared,^^^  "  .  .      .     serait  une 

sacrilege  veritable  de  I'autorite  spirituelle."  He  goes  even 
further.  He  denies  that  the  Chamber  had  the  right  to  deal 
with  the  Concordat  at  all.  In  his  view,  the  virtual  withdrawal 
of  that  agreement  was  due  not  to  its  refusal  by  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  people,  but  by  their  unwillingness  to  provide 
the  funds  for  its  appUcation.  The  Concordat  itself  he  regards 
as  no  more  than  a  piece  of  private  legislation  for  the  Roman 
church  which  the  Pope,  out  of  courtesy,  had  communicated  to 
the  king  of  France.  Certain  relations  between  the  two  required 
a  readjustment  of  financial  arrangements,  but  that  was  all. 
The  analogy  between  this  conception  and  the  Catholic  inter- 
pretation of  Wiseman's  famous  pastoral  of  1851,^^5  jg  Qf  course 

"^  It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  situation  with  the  similar  contro- 
versy in  England  over  the  Deceased  Wives'  Sisters  Act.  Cf.  my  "Problem 
of  Sovereignty,"  p.  118  n:  23. 

120  Ibid.,  I,  629  f . 

»2i  Ibid.  I,  649. 
■  «2  Ibid.,  I,  656. 

123  "Ocuvres,"  II,  123. 

'^*Ibid. 

126  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  145  f . 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        211 

clear.  Each  looks  upon  the  church  as  containing  within  itself 
all  the  essential  elements  of  a  state.  That  the  field  of  terri- 
torial action  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  state  proper  it  regards  as 
unessential;  for  the  content  of  its  regulation  is  purely  mental 
in  character.  But  insofar  as  men  give  allegiance  to  the  papal 
crown  it  has  the  right  to  exercise  a  sovereignty  over  them. 
"Le  Christianisme,"  he  wrote/26 ''est  une  societe  ....  mais 
point  de  societe  sans  pouvoirs  et  sans  devoirs,  sans  commande- 
ment  et  sans  obeissance;  done  il  existe  un  pouvoir  et  des  de- 
voirs spirituels,  une  autorite  ayant  droit  de  commander  aux 
esprits,  qui  sont  tenus  de  lui  obeir  ....  qui  n'admit  pas 
un  pouvoir  souverain,  perpetuel  et  permanent,  ou  ne  s'entend 
pas,  ou  nie  I'Eglise."  Obviously,  such  a  conception  of  the 
church  leaves  no  room  for  secular  interference.  Rather  does 
it  almost  challenge  it  by  the  infinite  power  to  which  it  lays 
claim.  And  that  was  the  more  inevitable  since  Lamennais 
makes  continual  insistence  of  the  necessity  of  religion  to  tho 
state.  At  the  same  time  to  deny  the  state  the  right  to  sug- 
gest conditions  upon  which  that  relation  may  be  established 
is  virtually  to  deny  the  right  of  the  state  to  settle  the  terms 
upon  which  it  may  exist. 

Not  even  from  that  conclusion  did  Lamennais  shrink.  The 
state  has  to  decide  between  atheism  and  religion.  If  it  chooses 
to  admit  the  latter  it  must  not  attempt  the  control  of  its  asso- 
ciations. It  must  submit,  where  the  influence  of  the  church 
is  concerned,  to  the  discipline  it  demands. ^^^  That  is,  in  effect, 
to  submit  to  the  Pope;  for  he  accepts  with  eager  gladness  the 
conclusion  of  de  Maistre  that  the  power  of  the  sovereign  pontiff 
is  illimitable.^28  'pg  put  one's  confidence  in  councils  is  not 
merely  heretical,  but  even  destructive  of  the  basic  conception 
of  the  church.  For  the  church  above  all  things  is  an  unity,  and 
to  suggest  a  power  above,  or  concurrent  with,  that  of  the  Pope 
is  to  destroy  that  unity.^29  go  he  does  not  hesitate  to  define 
religious  liberty  as  obedience  to  the  civil  power  and  to  argue 

126  "Oeuvres,"   II,  129.     The  article  is  particularly  important  as  it  is  an 
enthusiastic  review  of  de  Maistre's"Du  Pape"  which  had  then  just  appeared. 
»"  "Oeuvres,"  II,  156  ff. 

128  Ibid.,  II,  135. 

129  Ibid.,  II,  134. 


212        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

that  liberty  is  greatest  where  that  obedience  is  most  complete. "° 
To  free  man  from  religious  obedience  seems  to  him  not  different 
from  his  erection  into  God ;  for  from  whom  docs  power  originate 
if  not  from  God?'^*  He  denies  the  sovereignty  of  the  people 
because  its  consequence  is  the  subversion  of  all  social  order, 
and  a  doctrine  cannot  be  true  of  which  the  results  are  so  dis- 
astrous. ^^^  So,  too,  tolerance  becomes  impossible;  for  it  makes 
of  power  the  plaything  of  ambitious  pride,  and  thereby  destroys 
at  once  its  object  and  its  function.^^^ 

It  is  a  powerful  assault  against  both  individualism  and  the 
foundations  of  the  modern  state.  But  what  it  lacked  was  the 
demonstration — which  neither  Bonald  nor  de  Maistre  pro- 
vided— that  individualism  is  as  a  fact  defective  in  its  philo- 
sophic foundations.  It  was  easy  to  dismiss  the  right  of  free 
enquiry  as  the  basis  of  belief;  but  the  real  necessity  was  to 
show  wherein  its  error  consisted.  It  was  to  that  task  that 
Lamennais  addressed  himself  in  the  second  part  of  the  "Essai 
sur  I'indifference"  which  he  pubUshed  in  1821.  The  volume, 
indeed,  made  nothing  like  the  sensation  of  the  earlier  portion; 
and  so  careful  a  judge  as  Barante  seems  to  have  found  it 
tiresome. ^^  But  the  book  has  an  important  place  in  the  intel- 
lectual history  of  Lamennais  since  the  theory  by  which  he 
sought  to  refute  individualism,  is,  in  fact,  that  which  contrib- 
utes most  singularly  to  the  destruction  of  his  ultramontane 
ideas.  It  is  in  reality  Cartesianism  that  he  is  attacking.  The 
philosophic  analogue  of  protestantism,  it  is  the  parent  of  social 
disorganisation.  So  immense  was  the  authority  of  Descartes 
that  practically  unaided  he  had  given  a  passport  to  rationalism 
in  theology. ^^^  What  Lamennais  strove  to  show  was  the  bank- 
ruptcy of  philosophy,  its  inability  to  solve  the  central  problems 
by  which  man  is  faced.  He  urges  that  the  core  of  life  is,  in 
fact,  not  doubt  but  certainty  and  that  the  basis  of  this  certainty 

"» Ibid.,  II,  165. 
"^Ibid.,  II,  186. 

"^  Ibid.,  II,  188.     In  this  he  agrees  with  the  famous  speech  of  Chateau- 
briand, Journel  Official,  2.5  February,  1823. 
'^^Ihid.,  II,  193. 

"^  "Souvenirs,"  Vol.  Ill,  p.  126.     Cf.  p.  28. 
>»  "Essai,"  Pt.  II,  Ch.  1. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        213 

is  the  unanimous  testimony  of  men.  In  such  an  aspect,  truth 
is  easily  obtainable.  It  is  no  more,  but  no  less,  than  the  gen- 
erality of  men  believes.  It  is  not  a  system  that  he  expounds. 
What  he  does  is  to  take  those  dogmas  most  necessary  to  his 
system  and  to  proclaim  their  truth  by  the  demonstration  of 
their  common  acceptance. ^^^  Men  have  faith  in  God,  and 
therefore  God  exists.^^^  The  religion  which  rests  on  the  broad- 
est basis  of  visible  authority  is  the  Roman  Catholic  which  there- 
fore is  the  most  incontestably  true.^^^  But  if  it  is  true  it  must 
be  revealed  from  God;^^*  and  that  is  to  give  it  the  authority 
it  had  claimed  for  its  principles  in  the  earlier  portion  of  his 
essay. 

Of  the  philosophic  weakness  of  such  an  argument  it  is  not 
necessary  here  to  speak.^^**  It  occasioned  the  most  vehement 
controversy,  and  there  were  not  a  few  who  regarded  it  as  hereti- 
cal.^^^  The  fundamental  point  was  the  fact  that  it  left  open  the 
road  to  liberalism.  For  Lamennais,  after  all,  had  only  to  con- 
vince himself  that  the  majority  of  men  disbelieved  in  ecclesias- 
tical conservatism  to  be  able  to  urge  its  untruth.  At  the  moment 
he  might  be  the  defender  of  ultramontane  doctrine,  but  it  was 
the  defence  of  a  passionate  individualist  who  thought  that  most 
men  beUeved  it  was  right  simply  because  he  did  so  himself. 
Rome,  indeed,  gave  a  tacit  admission  of  the  theological  recti- 
tude of  his  doctrines  by  permitting  the  appearance  of  an  Italian 
translation.^^  Whatever  Rome  may  lack,  she  has  the  virtue 
of  abundant  patience;  and  she  was  content  to  tolerate  the  un- 
certainties of  theological  novelty  where  the  political  conse- 
quences were  at  the  moment  so  beneficial. 

Meanwhile,  the  political  situation  was  giving  new  determin- 
ation to  the  extreme  royalists  while  it  made  the  radicals  more 

136  "Works,"  I,  177  f . 

137  Ibid.,  I,  186  f . 

138  Ibid.,  I,  229  f. 
"3  Ibid.,  I,  237  f. 

""  Cf .  Janet,  "La  philosophie  de  Lamennais,"  p.  26  f,  and  Ferraz,  op.  cit., 
II,  180-210. 

"1  Cf.  Laveille,  op.  cit.,  p.  121.  Letter  of  November  9,  1821,  and  Bou- 
tard,  op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  Ch.  XIV. 

i«  "Correspond"  (ed.  Forgues),  1, 41  f,  and  Cf .  Boutard,  1, 217,  for  a  list 
of  distinguished  Catholics  who  accepted  it. 


214        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

desperate.  The. seeds  of  the  Revolution  would  have  their  harvest 
and  if  the  retirement  of  Decazes  meant  the  surrender  of  the  king 
to  the  Right,  it  was  evident  enough  that  the  intransigeance  of 
that  party  was  leading  to  disaster.  Lamennais,  certainly,  did 
not  deceive  himself.  The  violence  of  the  ministry  seemed  to  him 
to  be  no  less  threatening  than  that  of  the  Revolutionaries  ;^^^ 
and  he  found  their  theory  of  a  state-religion  in  every  sense 
embarrassing.  Between  political  atheism  amd .  spoliation  he 
was  not  anxious  to  make  a  choice.^^  The  only  sure  remedy  was 
the  frank  adoption  of  Christianity  as  the  basis  of  society,  and 
for  that  step  the  government  lacked  the  necessary  courage.  ^'*^ 
It  was  impossible,  as  he  urged,^^®  to  give  any  sanction  to  au- 
thority without  the  establishment  of  a  regime  almost  anti- 
thetic to  that  of  the  Restoration.  He  saw  fear  and  jealousy  as 
the  guardians  of  national  policy. ^^''  The  principles  of  the  Holy 
alliance  seemed  to  him  worthless;  and  already  he  foretold  the 
onset  of  a  new  revolution."^  The  dislike  of  the  Jesuits  seemed 
to  render  impossible  a  genuinely  religious  policy  such  as  he 
desired."^  When  men  like  Courier  and  Beranger  were  willing  to 
undergo  prosecution  for  their  cause  the  unity  he  cherished  was 
clearly  far-off.  The  press  might  be  controlled ;  but  the  passion- 
ate opposition  of  the  hberals  showed  that  patience  would  have 
its  Umits.^^°  It  was  easy  to  attack  such  papers  as  showed  a 
contempt  for  the  State  religion,  and  to  deliver  up  the  university 
to  the  priests.  But  each  step  that  was  taken  only  showed  more 
clearly  how  utterly  the  old  regime  had  passed.  Guizpt  and 
Cousin  might  cease  to  lecture  ;^^^  but  it  was  impossible  perman- 
ently to  silence  such  men.  Nor  did  the  Spanish  policy  of  the 
ministry  prove  as  efficacious  as  might  have  been  desired.  The 
restoration  of  absolutism  might  be  preached  as  a  crusade,  but 

"3  "Corresp.  entre  Lamennais  et  Vitrolles,"  p.  86.    I  cite  this  volume  as 
Vitrollcs. 

1"  "Vitrolles,"  p.  93. 

"s  Ibid.,  99. 

""  Ibid.,  100. 

1"  Ibid.,  120. 

"» Ibid.,  p.  125,  letter  of  Jan.  1,  123  cf.,  p.  132. 

1^9  Laveille,  op.  cit.  164,  letter  of  Jan.  24,  123. 

160  Debidour,  op.  cit.  369. 

>"  "Bardoux  Guizot,"  p.  34. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        215 

the  war  was  everywhere  reaUsed  to  be  a  disastrous  failure  which 
served  only  to  make  more  evident  the  impossibility  of  royalist 
extremism.    Lamennais  might  justify  the  Inquisition ;^52  but  he 

knew  in  his  heart  the  folly  of  such  efforts. ^^^  So  high  did  passion 
run  that  the  minister  of  the  interior  actually  invited  the  clergy 
to  preach  Gallican  doctrines,  and  particularly  the  articles  of 
1682,  in  the  vain  hope  of  assuaging  men's  anger.^^'*  When 
Charles  X  mounted  the  throne  in  the  autumn  of  1824  the  cler- 
ical party  may  have  obtained  the  king  it  desired;  but  it  was  the 
tragedy  of  his  accession  that  his  ideas  made  a  successful  reign 
impossible.  For  Charles  was  still  the  Count  d'Artois  and  he 
was  incapable  of  understanding  the  age  in  which  he  was  to  rule. 
The  man  of  Coblentz  could  not  govern  a  France  which  had 
tasted  the  sweets  of  Revolution. 

The  demands  of  the  clerical  party,  in  fact,  were  inconsistent 
with  the  charter  which  had  been  the  express  condition  of  the 
Bourbon  restoration.  What  churchmen  like  Clermont-Ton- 
nerre  desired  was  simply  the  absorption  of  the  state  by  the 
church;  and  if  his  audacious  programme  resulted  in  his  prosecu- 
tion, it  was  symptomatic  of  the  temper  of  his  party.^^^  Charles' 
ministers  might  draw  up  new  projects  of  a  code  of  sacrilege  in 
the  manner  of  the  middle  ages  ;^^^  but  in  the  long  run  they  could 
not  meet  the  arguments  of  men  like  Constant  and  Royer- 
Collard.^^^  The  king  might  be  given  power  to  authorise  by 
ordinance  the  establishment  of  new  congregations.^^^  But  this 
in  fact,  was  not  a  church-policy  to  which  Lamennais  could  give 
his  adhesion.  It  was  Galhcan  to  the  core  since  it  emphasised 
by  its  very  nature  the  dependence  of  the  church  on  the  goodwill 
of  the  king.  Villele  with  his  law  of  sacrilege  seemed  to  him  like 
the  serpent  tempting  Eve  in  Paradise.^^^    It  seemed  less  like 

152  "Works,"  I,  193. 

^^^  As  the  whole  of  his  correspondence  with  Vitrolles  from  1822-4  makes 
evident. 

1"  Debidour,  op.  cit.  376. 

155  Ibid. 

156  Ibid.,  379. 

15^  See  his  great  speech  in  Barante,  Roj^er-CoUard,  II,  242  f,  and  the 
following  essay. 

158  Debidour,  op.  cit.  383. 

'53  "Correspond"  (ed.  Forgues),  I,  191,  March  13,  25. 


216        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

service  to  the  church  than  an  act  of  devotion  to  the  crown.^^° 
"On  pousse  de  toutes  parts"  he  wrote/^^"a  une  rupture  avec 
Rome  et  r^tabhssement  d'une  EgUse  national,  d'une  Eghse 
representative. "  What  he  desired  was  an  opportunity  for  the 
church  to  live  freely  its  own  life.  One  may  imagine  that  he  felt 
this  the  more  keenly  since  his  reception  at  Rome  in  the  previous 
year  had  been  all  that  his  heart  could  have  desired;  the  man 
who  found  in  the  workroom  of  the  Pope  no  other  decoration 
save  the  image  of  the  Virgin  and  his  own  portrait^'^^  was  not 
likely  to  belittle  the  value  of  Roman  influence,  and  that  at  a 
time  when  Rome  was  more  than  suspicious  of  the  Gallicanism 
of  French  ecclesiastical  policy.^" 

Nor,  from  his  own  standpoint,  was  he  wrong  in  his  suspicions. 
The  Galilean  church  had  embraced  the  cause  of  royalism  with 
a  fervour  which  suggested  nothing  so  much  as  Anglican  enthusi- 
asm for  the  house  of  Stuart.  Their  bishops  no  less  than  their 
priests  seem  to  have  convinced  themselves  that  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  royal  despotism  they  would  find  the  means  of 
ecclesiastical  triumph.  It  is  true  that  they  did  not  hesitate  to 
make  their  victory  the  condition  of  their  support;  and  it  is 
even  possible  to  argue  that  many  of  them  went  further  in  their 
demands  than  Lamennais  himself  would  have  done.^^*  But  the 
fundamental  fact  remained  that  they  were  satisfied  to  work  out 
their  own  salvation  through  the  state.  What  they  wanted  was 
the  exclusive  establishment  of  the  ancien  regime;  and  they  in 
no  sense  reaUsed  that  they  were  separated  from  their  ideal  by 
the  flaming  sword  of  the  Revolution.  Lamennais  saw  more 
deeply  and  more  truly.  He  was  far  from  certain  that  the  cause 
of  monarchy  was  destined  to  triumph  ;^^^  and  he  was  unwilling 
to  prejudice  the  church  by  alUance  with  an  institution  which, 

i«»  Ibid.,  I,  195,  April  30,  25. 

1"  Ibid.,  I,  208,  October  12,  25. 

"2  Boutard,  op.  cit.  I,  Ch.  XVI.  It  is  impossible  to  know  how  much 
credence  may  be  attached  to  the  famous  story  that  Leo  XII  made  Lamen- 
nais a  cardinal  in  petto. 

iM  Artaud,  "Hist,  de  Leon  XII,"  I,  Ch.  20. 

i"Cf.  the  judgment  of  Viel-Castel,  "Hist,  de  la  Restaurafinn,"  Vol. 
XIV,  p.  29. 

106  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  I,  208,  October  13,  25. 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE        217 

after  all,  would  profit  more  than  it  would  confer  benefit  by  the 
alliance.  He  was  acutely  conscious  of  the  important  dissensions 
within  the  ranks  of  those  who  were  eager  to  rebuild  the  ecclesi- 
astical edifice.  Clermont-Tonnerre  might  demand  an  ultra- 
montanism  expressed  in  terms  of  state-control;  but  there  were 
men  who,  Hke  Montlosier,i^^  while  earnest  supporters  of  a  church 
as  the  Jansenists  conceived  it,  were  yet  bitter  in  their  reproaches 
of  a  government  which,  as  they  urged,  had  surrendered  itself  to 
the  clergy. ^^^  In  any  case,  he  did  not  like  the  idea  of  state- 
dependence.  What  he  was  convinced  of  was  the  power  of  the 
church  to  stand  on  its  own  foundations.  It  could  reach  the 
minds  of  men  without  the  intervention  of  secular  government. 
It  was  to  the  demonstration  of  that  fundamental  belief  that  he 
turned  his  energies. 

V.  THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  SECULAR  STATE 

What,  clearly,  Lamennais  feared  was  the  sovereignty  of  the 
state;  and  it  was  to  avoid  its  control  over  religious  affairs  that 
he  elaborated  in  his  discussion  of  the  relations  between  rehgion 
and  politics  the  basis  of  that  theocracy  which  reached  its  inevit- 
able culmination  in  the  decrees  of  the  Vatican  Council. ^^^  He 
submits  every  sort  and  kind  of  question  to  the  authority  of  the 
church,  and  the  judgment  of  the  church  he  equates  with  the 
papal  judgment.  The  whole  work,  in  fact,  is  a  passionate  pro- 
test against  the  implicit  federahsm  of  1682.  He  does  not,  like 
de  Maistre,  attempt  a  historic  justification  of  the  ultramontane 
theory.  Rather  does  he  assert  the  simple  doctrine  that  only, 
as  a  practical  question,  in  the  unified  sovereignty  of  Rome  can 
relief  be  found  from  the  dangers  by  which  the  church  is  con- 
fronted. Every  idea  which  tends  to  discredit  the  necessity  of 
its  unique  control  is,  as  he  insists,  a  fatal  blow  at  the  whole 
ecclesiastical  structure.  What,  of  course,  he  is  attacking  is 
essentially  the  principles  of  liberalism.     He  attempts  to  dis- 

'^^See  Bardoux's  able  monograph,  "Montlosier  et  le  Gallicanisme." 

1"  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  I,  209. 

'^8  The  "De  la  Religion  Consideree  dans  ses  rapports  avec  Hordre  poli- 
tique et  civil"  was  originally  published  in  two  parts,  the  first  four  chapters 
as  a  volume  in  1825  and  the  last  set  in  1826.  I  have  discussed  them  as  a 
single  work. 


218        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

credit  them  by  proof  that  they  are  the  logical  precursor  of 
anarchy.  He  denies  the  adequacy  of  any  system  which  does  not 
base  itself  and  its  rights  upon  the  authoritative  pronouncement 
of  a  single  and  supreme  power.  Without  a  centralised  govern- 
ment he  believes  that  every  safeguard  of  orthodoxy  is  open  to 
destruction.  And  since  religion  is  the  safeguard  of  the  whole 
social  edifice,  it  is  clear  that  upon  the  acceptance  of  ultramonta- 
nism  the  salvation  of  society  itself  may  without  difficulty  be 
made  to  depend. ^^^ 

Lamennais,  at  any  rate,  so  makes  it;  and  it  is  interesting  to 
reflect  that  when  his  own  change  of  attitude  was  so  near  at  hand 
the  starting-point  of  his  attitude  should  have  been  a  distrust  of 
democracy.  The  regime  of  the  time  he  regarded  as  already — it 
seems  incredible  enough — no  more  than  a  representative 
republic, "°  and  it  was  with  a  grim  picture  of  its  defects  that  he 
began  his  survey.  The  existence  of  the  chamber  he  insisted 
Was  already  the  division  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  state. ^^^  The 
king  was  no  more  than  a  great  memory  of  the  past.  His  func- 
tions had  passed  from  him  to  a  ministry  dependent  upon  Parlia- 
ment. But  that  Parliament  itself  derived  its  powers  from  the 
people,  so  that  France  was  already  that  democracy  which  is  the 
source  of  political  illusion.^''^  But  democracy  lacks  stabiUty. 
It  has  no  principles  and  it  is  irresistibly  in  a  condition  of  per- 
petual agitation.  You  cannot  teach  it.  It  is  contemptuous  of 
authority  and  it  trusts  no  one  of  superior  talent.  Those  who 
attain  its  favours  are  always  the  mediocre,  and  they  win  their 
position  by  servility  and  dishonest  adroitness.  Democracy 
destroys  Christianity;  for  the  latter  centres  itself  round  the  idea 
of  a  single  and  supreme  authority  which  is  alien  from  the  spirit 
of  democratic  government.  And  while  Christianity  is  conser- 
vative, democracy  is  by  nature  liberal  so  that  there  is  already 
a  fundamental  incompatibility.  It  is  thus  that  he  explains  the 
hostility  of  the  Revolution  to  the  church;  for  to  strike  at  the 
guardian  of  orthodoxy  is  to  prepare  the  way  for  that  egalita- 
ranism  which  he  regards  as  no  more  than  the  parent  of  universal 

109  Pqp  r^  useful  discussion  of  the  whole  work  of.  Janet  op.  cit.  pp.  37-54. 
"0  "Corresp."  (cd.  Forgues),  Vol.  I,  p.  209. 
1"  "Oeuvres,"  II,  15. 
^•^Ibid.,  II,  16. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN   STATE         219 

confusion, ^^^  There  are,  of  course,  minor  confusions  also, 
corruption,  the  destruction  of  all  sense  of  right,  atheism  and  a 
highly-flavoured  type  of  despotic  rule  are  sooner  or  later  inevit- 
able."'* Legislation  means  no  more  than  the  triumph  of  special 
interests,  administration  is  the  victory  of  caprice  and  incoher- 
ence."^ There  is  no  longer  room  for  virtue,  and  the  multipli- 
cation of  private  speculation  and  invention  results  in  the  con- 
fusion of  public  prosperity  with  the  progress  of  civilisation."^ 

Such  an  exordium  does  not  promise  well  for  particularisation. 
When  he  applies  these  generalities  to  the  France  of  the  Restora- 
tion, it  is  at  once  clear  to  him  that  the  state  is  atheist."'  It  is 
true  that  the  charter  declares  Catholicism  to  be  the  religion  of 
France,  but  these  are  words  without  meaning.  It  has  become 
essential  to  conciliate,  and  the  real  purpose  of  the  charter  can 
no  longer  be  maintained."^  The  result  of  this  political  atheism 
has  been  to  destroy  the  hold  of  religion  on  domestic  society. 
No  one  can  now  hope  for  a  religious  revival;  indifPiorence, 
negligence,  avowed  disbelief  are  the  characteristics  of  the  time."^ 
Public  instruction  has  become  a  political  institution;  and  Bos- 
suet's  Defense  of  the  articles  of  1682  has  become  a  text-book  for 
the  young.^*"  The  law  has  come  to  look  upon  religion  simply  as 
a  political  weapon;  it  is  now  a  thing  to  be  administered,  a 
public  establishment  which  is  recognised  out  of  courtesy  because 
some  millions  of  French  men  happen  to  believe  in  a  certain  form 
of  it.^^^  It  has  thus  become  essential  to  regard  Catholicism  with 
defiance,  for  alone  of  all  religions  does  it  pretend  to  set  limits  to 
the  sovereignty  of  such  anarchic  doctrines.^^^  Protestantism  is 
in  different  case.  Lacking  as  it  does  both  dogma  and  discipline 
it  has  no  corporate  bond.  It  is  by  its  very  nature  destined  to 
dependence  upon  the  civil  power.  But  the  duration  of  Cathol- 
ic ihid. 

"'  Ibid.,  17. 

»'6  Ibid.,  18. 

176  Ibid.,  19. 

1"  Ibid.,  Chap.  II. 

"8  Ibid.,  20-21. 

i'9  Ibid.,  25  f. 

18"  Ibid.,  29. 

181  Ibid.,  33. 

182  Ibid.,  34. 


220        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

icism  would  alone  prove  it  to  be  the  strongest  of  societies.  It 
has,  however,  other  and  decisive  virtues.  It  is  divine  in  its 
institution  and  independent  by  its  nature.  It  has  its  own  hier- 
archy, its  own  laws,  its  inalienable  sovereignty.  It  has  remained 
unchanging  from  its  origin.  It  has  the  noblest  of  missions.  It 
teaches  in  the  name  of  the  greatest  legislator  of  all.  Whatever 
of  stability  the  modern  world  possesses  it  owes  to  the  Catholic 
church.  Yet  the  exercise  of  its  rights  is  hampered  on  every  side 
by  jealous  men;  and  they  seek  to  dissolve  its  unity  as  a  corpor- 
ate force.  In  such  a  situation  the  one  object  of  men's  efforts 
must  be  the  preservation  of  its  oneness  that  it  may  remain  as  the 
life-giving  force  of  civilisation. ^^^ 

What,  then,  he  has  to  discuss  are  the  conditions  under  which 
the  existence  of  Catholicism  is  possible.  He  fastens  at  once 
upon  its  unity  as  the  fundamental  safeguard  of  its  continuance. 
For  him  the  whole  motive  force  of  the  church  has  been  Rome. 
It  is  he  insists, ^^^  the  constituting  power  of  Christianity.  Only 
the  name  of  Rome  deters  the  enemies  of  social  order  from  their 
fatal  work.  "  Point  de  pape,  point  d  'Eglise/'  and  that  whether  as 
a  matter  of  history  or  of  dogma.  The  church  is  a  corporation  in 
which  true  religion  finds  its  resting  place. ^^^  But,  fundamentally, 
as  it  has  been  universal  and  perpetual,  so  it  has  been  always  one. 
But  it  could  not  be  one  unless  it  had  a  centre  of  unity,  and  that 
centre  is  to  be  found  in  the  sovereign  pontiff.  So  that  if  the  pope 
is  thus  to  be  identified  with  the  church — Ubi  Petrus  ibi  ecclesia^^* 
— the  consequences  are  clear.  The  Pope  must  be  infallible  and 
none  must  contest  his  authority.  He  is  a  supreme  monarch,  for 
once  his  decisions  are  called  into  question  his  sovereignty  is 
worthless.  But  the  syllogism  is  more  tremendous  even  than  its 
premiss.  Point  d'Eglise,  point  de  christianisme.  Idle  dreamers 
have  thought  to  revise  the  religion  of  Christ  by  reforming  the 
church,  but  the  result  of  their  efforts  has  always  been  to  destroy 
the  principles  of  religion  itself.'**^  For  to  deny  a  single  dogma  is 
to  destroy  the  structure  of  the  whole;    and  what  man  cannot 

'83  Ibid.,  85. 

'»^  Ibid.,  44.    The  phrase  is  De  Maistre's. 

186  Ibid.,  47. 

'80  Ambrose's  comment  on  Psahn  XT>. 

'"  Ibid.,  48. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        221 

prove  by  his  reason  he  must  believe  on  faith. ^^^  So  we  are  led 
to  our  conclusion.  Point  de  christianisme,  point  de  reli- 
gion .  .  .  .  et  par  consequent  point  de  societe.  Once  we  de- 
clare ourselves  independent  of  Christianity  duty  is  destroyed 
and  vague  sentiment  takes  its  place. ^^^  Everyone,  as  in  his  own 
time,  does  as  he  pleases;  the  obligatory  character  of  faith  ceases 
to  bind  the  conscience  of  men.  But  thus  to  loose  the  bonds  of 
religion  is  to  deprive  society  of  the  sanctions  upon  which  its 
existence  depends.  So  to  attack  the  pope  is  a  crime  against 
society,  an  attempt  at  the  destruction  of  the.  very  principle  of 
civilisation.^^"  That  we  may  be  men,  we  must,  in  such  an  analy- 
sis, embrace  ultramontane  doctrine ;  and  he  will  show  from  the 
examination  of  its  antithesis  how  deadly  are  the  effects  of  its 
rejection. 

It  is  clear  that  in  such  an  analysis  whatever  seems  to  diminish 
the  strength  of  papalism  is  a  severe  blow  at  the  roots  of  the 
church.  Here  is  the  real  root  of  Lamennais'  distrust  of  Gal- 
ilean doctrine.  It  lays  emphasis  on  the  particular  church  in- 
stead of  the  universal.  It  fore-shadows  a  federal  instead  of  a 
unitary  organisation  of  its  powers.  What,  above  all,  arouses 
his  distrust  is  the  fact  that  Gallicanism  is  not  ecclesiastical  but 
political  in  its  origin.^^^  It  may  demand  "liberties"  for  the  French 
church,  but  it  asks  them  only  that  the  state  may  the  more  com- 
pletely destroy  its  independence.  Gallicanism  speaks  of  liberty; 
but  the  liberties  of  the  church  are  rights  that  the  pope  concedes, 
and  he  would  not  concede  the  freedom  of  doctrine  or  of  govern- 
ance to  a  body  which  cannot  meet  save  by  secular  permission.^^^ 
But  his  obj  ections  go  even  deeper.  The  real  effort  of  Gallicanism 
is  summed  up  in  two  propositions  each  of  which  is  fatal  to 
Catholicism.  It  asserts  the  independence  of  temporal  sover- 
eignty. It  assumes  the  superiority  of  a  general  council  to  the . 
Pope.  But  he  will  admit  neither  of  these  conclusions.  For  to 
assert  the  independence  of  temporal  power  is  at  once  to  assert 
the  duality  of  the  world  and  thus  to  render  impossible  thatreduc- 

i»8  Ibid.,  49. 
i^a  Ibid.,  50. 
"» Ibid.,  52. 
191  Ibid.,  53. 
"2  Ibid.,  55. 


222        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

tion  to  unity  for  which  he  was  so  anxious.  Moreover  since  the 
church  and  the  church  only  is  the  source  of  the  divine  law  such  a 
'doctrine  assumes  that  a  law  made  by  men  is  to  rank  as  of  equal 
worth  with  what  comes  directly  from  God.^^^  It  does  not  even 
admit  that  God 'slaw  mu.st  be  supreme  since  it  confers  sovereign 
power  upon  what  is  by  defmition  non-religious  in  nature.  He 
does  not  deny  the  existence  of  the  two  powers;  but  he  insists 
on  the  dogmatic  and  historical  inferiority  of  the  secular. ^^*  Nor 
will  he  admit  that  a  council  can  control  the  papacy.  That  is  to 
establish  a  collective  sovereignty  and  thus  to  transform  the 
church  from  the  monarchy  it  ideally  is  into  a  republic  such  as 
Rome  or  Venice."^  But  a  collective  sovereignty  is  no  longer 
unified,  and  to  postulate  it  is  thus  to  destroy  the  fundamental 
fact  that  the  church  is  one.'""  Lamennais  embarks  upon  a  long 
and  acrimonious  dissection  of  the  tendencies  towards  church 
nationalism  so  notably  represented  in  his  time  by  bishops  like 
Frayssinous  and  laymen  like  Montlosier.'^'  He  denies  that 
popes  can  ever  err.  He  insists  that  the  decrees  of  1682  simply 
deliver  the  clergy  into  the  royal  hands. '^^  But  that  is  to  weaken 
the  allegiance  they  owe  to  Rome,  and  to  weaken  that  allegiance  is 
to  destroy  the  corporate  character  of  the  church.  It  is  therefore 
not  merely  uncatholic,  but  in  its  very  nature  it  is  the  kind  of 
church  that  tends  to  dependence  upon  the  good  will  of  the 
state.^^'  Even  in  the  France  of  the  Restoration,  that  good  will 
is  apparent  in  the  lack  of  fixity  in  the  relations  between  the 
church  and  the  government.^""  Today  the  church  receives  its 
subvention,  but  no  one  knows  the  possibilities  of  the  morrow. 
The  law  passes  an  annual  judgment  upon  the  advisability  of  its 
continuance;  and  its  educational  desires  are  frustrated  by  the 
existence  of  the  university.  The  whole  mechanism  of  church 
government,  in  fact,  is  operated  tentatively  and  with  difficulty 

"3  Ibid.,  57. 

'"^^Ibid.,  61. 

»»5  Ibid.,  65. 

'■"'Ibid.,  ^7. 

i"Cf.  Frayssinous,  "Les  Vrais  Principos  do  I'Eglisc  Gallicanc"  (1818); 
Montlosicr,  "De  la  Monarchic  Frangaise  au  Icr  Janvier,"  1824  (1824)  and 
Bardoux  op.  cit. 

'98  "Oeuvres"  II,  73. 

199  Cf.  Chapter  Mil,  passim. 

"o  Ibid.,  85. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        223 

when  such  continual  account  of  the  state  has  to  be  taken.  It  is 
only  in  complete  independence  that  the  terms  of  a  satisfactory 
existence  can  be  found-^**^ 

So  he  drives  us  back  to  the  dreams  of  Hildebrand,  There 
is  but  one  pope  and  all  kings  are  his  subjects.  The  Pope  must 
rule  because,  without  his  guidance  there  is  no  alternative  but 
anarchy.-"^  Where  men  erect  themselves  the  judges  of  every 
social  dogma  the  fall  of  civilisation  is  certain.  He  deems  that 
cataclysm  already  at  hand;  and  it  is  to  protect  France  against 
its  onset  that  he  proposes  this  pitiless  solution.  But,  as  with 
Bonald,  Lamennais  in  nowise  suggests  the  means  by  which 
that  solution  is  to  be  applied  to  events.  Nothing  is  more  fatally 
easy  than  the  diagnosis  of  social  evils  and  their  removal  by 
heroic  remedies.  Lamennais  lived  at  a  time  when  the  principle 
of  authority  could  no  longer  command  the  widespread  assent 
of  men.  If  Royer-Collard  and  Guizot  could  find  no  comfort 
in  his  theories,  it  was  assuredly  not  because  they  were  hostile 
to  the  division  of  sovereign  power.  It  was  simply  because  an 
immense  political  experience  had  taught  men  that  the  safe- 
guard against  its  abuse  was  its  partition.  Lamennais  was 
striving  to  breathe  new  life  into  a  loyalty  that  was  already 
dead.  The^alliance  of  throne  and  altar  no  longer  possessed  the 
magic  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  support  it;  and  he  was 
profoundly  rigEt  in  his  insistence  that  in  such  a  partnership  the 
throne  would  most  greatly  benefit.  The  dissolution  of  the 
alliance  would,  as  he  urged,  give  the  church  a  new  sense  of 
freedom.  She  would  cease  to  be  chained  to  the  wheels  of  the 
monarchic  chariot.  But  the  deduction  from  separation  is  not 
supremacy.  It  is  one  thing  to  believe  that  Rome  is  mistress 
of  the  world;  but  the  fundamental  fact  remains  that  the 
greater  part  of  men  are  unwilling  to  concede  her  right  to  domin- 
ion. He  was  right  in  his  urgent  assertion  that  Rome  was  a 
world-state  and  that  the  attempt  to  federalise  her  governance 
would  be  out  of  accord  with  her  historic  traditions.  Rome  has, 
since  the  Conciliar  movement  at  least,2°^  been   consistently 

201  Cf.  Chap.  IX,  passim. 

^c^  Ihid.,  93. 

2°3  Cf.  Figgis,"  From  Gerson  to  Grotius,"  Lect.  II.  N.  Valois  "Le  Pape 
et  le  Concile"  is  a  magnificent  analysis  of  the  whole  attempt  at,  and  failure 
of,  the  revolution  in  organisation. 


224        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Austinian  in  temper.  She  has  set  the  model  for  centrahsed 
government,  and  not  even  the  catastrophe  of  a  Reformation 
or  a  Revolution  could  sway  hor  in  the  direction  of  change. 
But  she  has  been  more  and  more  compelled  to  surrender  her 
position  as  a  temporal  power.  She  has  been  more  and  more 
compelled  to  confine  her  jurisdiction  to  the  spiritual  control 
of  those  who  are  walling  to  submit  to  her  guidance.  Even  in 
Lamennais'  own  time  she  Avas  losing  that  temporal  expression 
of  her  penalties  which,  in  the  middle  ages,  had  made  what  we 
now  call  the  state,  rank  as  no  more  than  her  constable.  Luther 
had  a  final  retort  to  her  claims  when  he  invented  the  divine 
right  of  kings.2''^  Effective  she  still  might  be  within  her  sphere 
— how  effective  the  greatest  of  her  advocates  was  himself 
within  a  decade  to  learn.  But  the  effectiveness  of  her  effort 
was  no  longer  external;  it  had  come  to  depend  upon  the  con- 
sent of  men.  Membership  of  the  state  was  no  longer  condi- 
tional upon  baptism  within  her  communion;  and  that,  after 
all,  was  the  final  blow  to  her  widest  claims.^"^  Her  sovereignty, 
in  fact,  had  been  reduced  from  the  universality  of  pre-Reforma- 
tion  times  to  a  will,  still,  indeed,  great,  but  now  compelled  to 
struggle  not  so  much  to  advance,  as  actually  to  maintain 
its  position.  Men  had  freed  themselves  from  the  notion  that 
power  is  justified  by  the  mere  fact  of  its  existence.  They  had 
learned — and  it  is  here  that  Rousseau  has  a  claim  on  our  grati- 
tude that  we  have  still  to  pay — that  the  fundamental  problem 
in  politics  is  not  the  description  or  maintenance  of  the  organs 
of  authority  but  the  inquiry  into  their  legitimacy.-"^  In  that 
light  the  claims  of  Lamennais  were  already  obsolete. 

Where,  indeed,  there  was  much  to  be  said  for  his  attitude 
was  in  his  firm  refusal  to  base  his  theory  of  social  organisation 
upon  no  other  consideration  than  that  of  public  policy.  Here^ 
it  is  true,  he  was  obviously  medieval;    for  the  abandonment  of 

20*  Of  course  it  is  much  earlier  in  origin;  but  what  Luther  did  was 
finally  to  make  it  effective  as  against  Rome. 

^"^  Cf .  for  this  view  or  in  its  most  extreme  form  the  "Summa' '  of  Augustinus 
Triumphus  (1473)  XXVI,  5. 

^""^  Cf .  the  remarks  on  the  distinction  between  Montesquieu's  theories 
and  his  own  in  the  fifth  book  of  the  Emile;  and  for  his  insistence  that  force 
gives  no  right  the  "Contrat  Social"  Bk.  I,  Chs.  Ill  and  IV.  I  think  T.  H . 
Green  accepted  this  view.    Works  II,  396  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        225 

the  attempt  to  discover  a  natural  order  founded  upon  divine 
right  is  the  chief  poUtical  characteristic  of  the  modern  world. 
We  have  come  to  see  that  not  the  least  significant  criterion 
of  any  political  structure  is  its  expression  in  terms  of  the  gen- 
eral happiness  of  common  men.  It  is,  perhaps,  a  more  terrestrial 
standard  than  that  which  Lamennais  adopts.  He  was  above  all 
anxious  that  men  should  be  right;  and  he  meant  by  right  the 
acceptance  of  the  extreme  limits  of  Catholic  doctrine.  It  is 
obvious,  of  course,  that  intolerance  is  implied  in  such  an  atti- 
tude and  the  modern  rejection  of  intolerance  seems  based  upon 
two  assumptions  of  which  Lamennais  could  take  no  account. 
Weare  too  uncertain  of  the  truth  of  any  spiritual  interpretation 
of  life  to  give  it  the  final  sanction  of  complete  authority;  and 
we  find  that  the  historical  results  of  intolerance  in  no  sense 
Justify  its  exercise.  It  is,  in  some  sense,  the  banishment  of 
God  from  politics;  and  in  that  sense  we  live  in  an  anti-theocratic 
age.  We  have  passed,  as  Mr.  Figgis  has  finely  pointed  out,2°' 
"from  the  defence  of  rights  to  the  realisation  of  right,"  and 
it  is  from  actual  experience  that  we  give  to  right  its  modern 
connotation.  What  Lamennais  did  not  realise  was  the  historic 
fact  that  the  multiplication  of  authority  arose  from  exactly 
that  process.  Catholicism  had  abused  its  powers;  and  in  the 
political  no  less  than  the  religious  sphere — he  would,  of  course, 
have  denied  the  legitimacy  of  such  separation — new  institu- 
tions arose  to  defend  what  men,  if  wrongly,  at  any  rate  sincerely, 
had  come  to  regard  as  fundamental.  The  very  existence  of 
such  diversity  had  relegated  to  the  impossible  the  theory  for 
which  he  stood.  The  old  high-prerogative  notion  of  sovereignty, 
three  centuries  of  a  history  of  which  the  Revolution  was  only 
a  dramatic  climax,  haa  securely  slain.  His  own  theory  of  cer- 
titude by  universal  consent  should  surely  have  made  him  ap- 
preciate the  significance  of  that  diversity  of  opinion  he  so  deeply 
regretted.  But  the  time  had  not  yet  come  when  that  realisa- 
tion should  be  driven  relentlessly  into  his  soul. 

VI.   THE  TRANSITION  TO  LIBERALISM 

It  was,  at  any  rate,  a  striking  protest;  and  if  it  met  everywhere 

2"  From  "Gerson  to  Grotius,"   p.   17.     The  whole  lecture  is  a  very 
precious  possession. 


226        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

with  a  doubtful  reception^''^  it  was  yet  a  challenge  which  no 
weak  government  dare  allow  to  pass  unanswered.  That  was 
the  more  certainly  the  case  since  the  very  month  before  the 
publication  of  its  second  part  the  veteran  Montlosier  had 
charged  the  ministry  with  a  cowardly  surrender  to  the  clerical 
party  ;2''^  and  even  if  the  accusation  were  only  in  part  the 
truth,2^°  yet  Lamennais'  arraignment  of  the  alliance  between 
throne  and  altar  seemed  to  give  colour  to  his  pretensions. 
The  only  step  they  deemed  it  possible  to  take  was  his  prose- 
cution; and  his  virtual  acquittal,^^^  after  an  argument  in  which 
his  counsel,  the  great  Berryer,  denied  that  the  decrees  of  1682 
were  a  part  of  French  law,  was  in  every  sense  a  personal  tri- 
umph.2^2  But  it  was  noteworthy  that  he  had  already  arrayed 
against  himself  the  episcopal  powers  of  France.  The  bishops, 
headed  by  Frayssinous,  addressed  a  declaration  to  the  crown 
which  was  unexceptionally  Gallican  in  sentiment  j^^^  and  it  was 
henceforth  clear  to  Lamennais  that  neither  from  the  crown 
nor  from  the  episcopate  was  help  to  be  expected. 

That  is  the  real  source  of  his  later  liberalism.  Disappointed. 
by  officialism  in  church  and  state,  his  only  resource  was  the 
general  mass  of  men.  But,  as  yet,  he  had  other  hopes.  He 
was  still  prepared  to  stake  everything  upon  the  action  of  Rome, 
and  his  letters  show  how  much  he  built  upon  the  accession  of 
an  energetic  nuncio  to  the  charge  of  French  affairs.^^^  Not 
that  he  concealed  from  himself  the  gravity  of  the  situation. 
A  long  struggle  was  in  front  of  him.  From  all  sides  there 
poured  forth  acrimonious  criticism  of  his  principles.^^^  He 
beUeved,  indeed,  that  the  body  of  the  clergy  was  well-disposed 
to  him,  and  he  still  insisted  on  the  glorious  future  of  the  church. ^^'^ 
But  that  made  him  the  more  insistent  on  the  need  for  a  direc- 

2«8  Cf.  Boutard,  op.  cit.  I,  302-3. 

209  "Memoire  h  consulter  siir  un  systfeme,"  etc.  (1826). 

^"'  It  is  denied,  not  without  some  interesting  evidence  by  Grandmaison 
in  his  interesting  work  "La  Congregation." 

^"  He  was  fined  thirty  francs. 

"^  See  Lamennais' own  description  of  the  trial  in  his  "Corresp."  (ed. 
Forgues),  I,  246. 

"'  Boutard  I,  334  f. 

"«  "Corresp."  I,  241. 

*'*  See  an  account  of  these  attacks  in  Boutard,  I,  345  f. 

"« "Corresp."  I,  253. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        227 

tion  of  their  enthusiasm.  "Tous  les  yeux,"  he  wrote,^"  "sont 
fixes  sur  Rome  ....  qu'elle  continue  de  se  taire, 
qui  osera,  qui  pourra,  parler?" 

He  had  ceased  to  expect  aid  from  the  state.  His  condemna- 
tion had  completed  in  him  a  long  process  of  disillusion.  He 
could  not  interpret  it  otherwise  than  as  a  determination  upon 
the  part  of  government  to  use  the  church  for  its  purposes.  So 
that  Rome  only  was  left,  and  it  was  upon  the  issue  of  that 
confidence  that  his  future  depended.  He  seems  to  have  thought 
highly  of  the  Pope,^!^  and  though  he  declared  that  the  idea  of 
a  national  church  was  in  everyone's  mind,  he  did  not  doubt 
that  once  a  frank  word  came  from  Rome,  the  loyalty  of  the 
provinces  to  the  true  conception  of  Catholicism  would  assert 
itself.219  Rome,  as  he  thought,  could  not  long  endure  the 
supervision  of  its  decrees  by  the  government.220  So  great  was 
the  servihty  of  the  Galilean  party  that  it  had  disgusted  even 
the  honest  liberals.  He  was  already  prepared  to  believe  that 
they  would  lend  a  new  support  to  his  cause  if  Rome  would 
but  do  its  duty.  "  Le  monde  a  change,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend,^^! 
"il  cherche  un  maitre:  il  est  orphelin,  il  cherche  un  pere.  Le 
trouvera-t-il?  Voila  la  question."  For,  on  all  sides,  the  ultra- 
montane position  was  menaced.  Men  who  held  his  opinions 
were  ruthlessly  dismissed.^^^  A  society  for  the  propagation  of 
pious  books  was  attacked  because  he  supported  it.^^s  Orders  of 
which  the  bishops  did  not  approve  were  prevented  from  under- 
taking missions.  People  even  went  so  far  as  to  whisper  that 
at  Rome  itself  Lamennais'  opinions  were  held  in  little  esteem.^^^ 
It  is  little  wonder  that  he  should  have  begun  to  feel  a  deep 
distrust  of  his  opponents  and  that  there  should  have  crept 
into  his  writings  that  note  of  acrimony  which  made  a  distin- 
guished Jesuit  protest  against  his  bitterness.^^^     Even  in  the 

2"  Ibid.,  1,  257. 

"» Ibid.,  I,  273. 

219  Ibid.,  1,  274. 

""  Ibid.,  1,  276. 

221  Ibid.,  1,  288. 

^2  Ibid.,  1,  279. 

^^  Ibid.,  I,  270. 

^^*  Ibid.,  I,  274.    Cf.  Boutard,  op.  cit.  I,  350. 

«6  Ibid.,  I,  355. 


228        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Jesuits  he  had  lost  all  confidence.  Attacked  as  the  society  was 
on  all  sides,  it  had  not  ceased  to  intrigue  with  every  party;  and 
its  declared  ultramontane  opinions  were,  for  him,  no  excuse 
for  the  hatred  it  engendered  in  the  minds  of  honest  men.^^^ 
The  nuncio  listed  with  politeness  to  his  expositions  of  policy; 
but  his  responses  seem  to  have  been  no  more  than  diplomatic 
expressions  of  the  papal  difficulties.^"  If  the  ideas  for  which  he 
stood  sponsor  were  gaining  widespread  acceptance  he  still 
feared  greatly  the  influence  of  authority  against  them.-^s 

More  and  more  he  was  driven  to  distrust  the  state.  "II 
faut  d'avance,"  he  said,^^^  "poser  les  bases  d'une  nouvelle 
societe  ....  c'est  folie  de  compter  sur  les  gouverne- 
ments  qui  ne  sont  plus  des  gouvernements,  qui  ne  peuvent 
plus  le  redevenir.  II  s'agir  de  faire  des  peuples."  It  is  a  note 
which  constantly  recurs.  Government  might  attempt  the  con- 
trol of  the  press,2^°  but  he  saw  in  it  only  a  weapon  by  which 
ultramontanism  might  receive  its  deathblow.  He  was  appalled 
at  the  incapacity  of  the  clergy.  Only  a  great  reform  could 
effect  the  requisite  change.^^^  More  and  more  he  feared  that 
religion  had  ceased  to  exercise  an  influence  over  the  minds  of 
men.  Europe  had  become  simply  a  vast  alliance  of  the  strong 
against  the  weak  and  a  system  of  principles  gave  way  to  a 
system  of  interests.  Only  when  they  regained  their  empire 
would  it  be  possible  to  hope.  Only  one  man  could  draw  the 
attention  of  the  peoples  to  their  existence,  and  he  was  silent.^^^ 

That  silence  is  the  fundamental  fact  in  Lamennais'  transi- 
tion to  liberalism.  Rome  seemed  to  him  too  temporising  in 
her  attitude.233  If  she  showed  signs  of  compromise,  that  would 
be  false  to  the  future.^^*  A  new  generation  was  arising  which 
needed  her  direction.  The  progress  of  revolutionary  ideas  was 
evident  on  every  hand.     The  government  interfered  with  in- 

2«  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  I,  295. 

2"  Ibid.,  I,  298-9. 

«"  Ibid.,  I,  309. 

«9  Ibid.,  1,  310-1. 

^'o  Debidour,  op.  cit.  397  f . 

23'  Vitrolles,  p.  180. 

"2  Spullor,  op.  cit.  144.    "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  I,  348-9. 

233  Ibid.,  I,  436. 

""  Ibid.,  1,  466. 


AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE         229 

creasing  enthusiasm  in  clerical  affairs.  Speed,  above  every- 
thing, was  necessary  to  the  church's  safety.  "Une  immense 
liberte,"  he  wrote  towards  the  close  of  1828,2'^  "est  indispensa- 
ble pour  que  les  verites  qui  sauveront  le  monde."  But  that 
liberty  could  come  only  when  Rome  should  speak.  Lamennais 
tlid  not  understand  the  thousand  political  considerations  which 
were  the  cause  of  her  silence.  He  was  asking  her  to  devote 
herself  to  spiritual  empire  alone;  but  that  was  to  invite  her 
to  surrender  a  faculty  of  temporal  interference  to  which  she 
held  firmly.  Nor  did  he  yet  understand  that  for  Rome  he  was 
himself  less  the  guardian  of  a  truth  which  meant  everything 
to  her  future  than  the  head  of  a  party  within  the  French  church 
of  which  the  success  was  more  than  doubtful.  Rome  would 
probably  have  agreed  to  many  elements  in  his  programme. 
But  she  must  have  realised  that  what  he  demanded^^^  she 
would  not  attain  without  a  struggle  far  more  bitter  than  La- 
mennais can  even  have  dreamed.  He  was,  after  all,  free;  and 
he  could  follow  his  principles  to  their  logical  conclusion.  But 
Rome  had  a  hundred  warring  interests  to  conciliate  and  in- 
numerable traditions  to  obey.  In  the  result,  an  abyss  devel- 
oped inevitably  between  their  views.  His  influence  was  grow- 
ing and  many  of  the  younger  generation  were  rallying  to  his 
side.  The  "Ecole  Menaisienne"  was  already  conceived  at  the 
end  of  1828.  Men  hke  Gerbet  and  de  Salinis  were  already 
his  firm  friends.  Little  by  little  he  was  coming  to  see  that 
authority,  even  in  the  church,  may  be  poisoned  at  its  source. 
It  was  with  this  feeling  already  deeply  rooted  that  he  pub- 
lished, early  in  1829,  his  "  Progres  de  la  Revolution." 

It  is  not  so  complete  a  rupture  with  his  earlier  views  as  he  was 
presently  to  make;  but  the  book  marks  in  a  real  sense  the 
birth  of  liberal  Catholicism  and  there  are  few  of  its  doctrines 
one  may  not  impHcitly  find  there.  In  a  society  that  is  really 
Christian,  Lamennais  points  out,  the  unity  of  the  people  is 
secured  by  sphitual  ties;  as  they  submit  to  the  prince  so  should 
they  submit  to  God.^^^     But  from  the  time  when  Louis  XIV 

235  Ibid.,  I,  486. 

236  His  programme  is  briefly  summarised  in  the  letter  of  Jan.  20,  1S2S. 
"Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  I,  416. 

23"  "Oeuvres,"  II,  242. 


230        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

proclaimed  the  destruction  of  the  two  powers  the  reaUsation 
of  that  ideal  has  become  impossible.  Two  theories  at  least 
have  arisen  which  aim  at  or  result  in  its  destruction. ^^^  A 
liberalism  so  logical  as  that  of  the  Glohe,'^^^  must  break  every 
social  bond;  for  while  it  denies  sovereignty  either  to  king  or 
people,  it  replaces  them  only  by  individual  opinion  which  is, 
in  truth,  to  let  loose  the  floodgates  of  anarchy.  Nor  is  it 
favourable  to  liberty;  for  the  condition  of  liberty  is  the  ex- 
istence of  a  legitimate  power  which  shall  act  in  accordance  with 
the  eternal  principles  of  justice.^'*''  Nor  is  Gallicanism  in  better 
case.  It  is,  in  truth,  a  gloss  for  servitude.  It  does  no  more 
than  free  kings  from  the  moral  code  and  leads  to  their  deifica- 
tion. It  makes  men  think  of  religion  as  the  natural  ally  of 
despotism  and  thus  dissipates  their  affection  for  it.  What  is 
needed  is  a  Christian  order.  After  all,  it  is  under'  the  segis  of 
Catholicism  that  Uberty  was  first  born;  and  the  guarantee  of 
its  continuance  is  the  submission  of  the  temporal  power  to  the 
spiritual.  If  men  turn  once  more  to  the  church  the  destructive 
combat  between  liberalism  and  the  Galileans  will  cease.^^^ 
With  neither  should  the  clergy  ally  itself.  Rather  should  it 
proclaim  its  entire  dissociation  with  all  political  life,  and  its 
connexion  only  with  Rome.  It  must  assert  its  ancient  rights. 
The  bishops  must  resuscitate  the  diocesan  synods  and  the 
provincial  councils.  The  mismanagement  of  the  state  in  edu- 
cation and  worship  must  cease.  The  clergy  must  free  itself 
from  the  reproach  of  ignorance  and  take  account  of  the  march 
of  knowledge.-''^  The  reign  of  the  church  will  be  the  work  of 
liberty;  from  freedom  only  can  truth  be  born.  Liberty  of 
conscience,  liberty  of  the  press,  liberty  in  education — these 
and  not  less  than  these  are  his  demands. ^^  "Sortez  de  la 
maison  de  servitude  ....  entrez  en  possession  de  la  lib- 
erty." It  is  a  cry  that  the  church  had  not  heard  in  two  hundred 
years  of  her  history. 

«8  "Les  Progrtis,"  etc.,  Ch.  II  and  III. 

233  The  paper  of  Royer-Collard  and  the  doctrinaire  hberals.  Cf.  the 
admirable  paper  of  Paul  Janet  in  tlic  Revue  de  Deux  Mondes  for  1879. 

2^«  "Ocuvres,"  II,  249. 

2«  "Oeuvres,"  II,  251  f. 

2«  "Oeuvres,"  II,  290  f. 

*"  Cf.  the  preface  to  the  Prtjgres  de  hi  Revohition. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        231 

The  book  is  the  logical  consequence  of  his  earlier  work. 
Where,  before,  he  had  trusted  kings,  he  now  trusted  the  people; 
where  before  he  had  trusted  Rome,  he  now  puts  his  confidence 
in  the  collective  power  of  the  priesthood.  He  has  seen  that 
kingship  has  traditions  which  make  its  reconciliation,  in  any- 
full  sense,  with  Catholic  ideals  impossible.  And  if  monarchy 
is  thus  held  back  in  the  state,  his  experience  of  Rome's  hesita- 
tions suggested  that  the  condition  of  the  church  is  not  different. 
To  be  driven  back  as  he  was  to  the  general  body  of  its  members 
was  to  find  its  real  meaning  in  the  life  that  it  led.  It  is  surely 
this  that  explains  the  almost  complete  absence  of  dogmatic 
discussion  from  his  enquiry.  He  is  interested  in  Catholicism 
as  a  spirit  which  may  become  again  the  mistress  of  men's 
souls.  Indeed,  he  is  so  far  cognisant  of  the  changing  intellec- 
tual perspective  that  he  insists  on  the  necessity  of  the  clergy 
being  fully  abreast  of  progress  in  scholarship.  It  is  here, 
clearly,  that  the  tenor  of  his  liberalism  is  evident.  That  for 
which  he  is  seeking  is  the  conditions  upon  which  the  Christian 
church — for  him  that  societas  perfecta  which  seems  destined 
eternally  to  haunt  the  minds  of  men — may  develop  unheeded. 
Doubtless  he  is  still  anxious  that  she  may  win  the  empire  of 
the  world.  He  is  still — as  he  remained  to  the  end — in  the  full 
sense  of  the  word  a  theocrat.  But  he  has  already  come  to 
understand  that  the  realms  of  church  and  state  are  by  their 
nature  distinct.  He  is  already,  even  if,  in  some  sort,  uncon- 
sciously, admitting  that  authority  cannot  be  single.  He  had 
hardly,  as  yet,  worked  out  the  implications  of  his  admission. 
He  perhaps  did  not  then  realise  that  he  was  thereby  reducing 
the  church  to  the  condition  of  a  voluntary  society  which,  even 
if  it  had  the  features  of  a  state,  was  nevertheless  distinct  from 
the  territorial  character  of  the  secular  organ.  He  no  longer, 
as  in  1818,  spoke  of  government  as  all-powerful.  He  had  not, 
indeed,  as  yet  embraced  liberalism  in  any  full  sense  of  the 
word.  He  appealed  to  it  as  men  who  are  persecuted  always 
make  appeal  to  the  principles  of  freedom.  But  he  had  come  to 
understand  that  without  it  the  guarantees  of  progress  would 
be  lacking.  He  disliked  its  vagueness;  and  he  hoped  to  abro- 
gate it  by  establishing  his  demand  upon  the  basis  of  an  accept- 
ance of  the  Christian  faith.     He  believed  then,  as  he  always 


232        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

believed,  that  only  in  the  acceptance  of  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity could  Europe  find  its  salvation.  That  was  what  he 
meant  by  saying  that  unity  would  be  reborn  in  the  struggle 
for  freedom.  That  was  why  he  welcomed  the  onset  of  the 
revolution  he  so  clearly  foresaw.  Renovation  must  be  the 
child  of  destruction;  the  tempest,  as  he  said,  would  purify  the 
air.  But  he  did  not  yet  know  that  he  was  speaking  the  lan- 
guage of  revolutionary  democracy  as  he  was  abandoning  the 
ideal  of  papal  Rome. 

VII.  THE  FOUNDATION  OF  L'AVENIR 

"When  a  certain  number  of  men,"  Lamennais  wrote  early 
in  1829,2^^  "keenly  conscious  of  those  truths  which  are  the 
basis  of  social  security  shall  unite  among  themselves,  then  we 
shall  have  the  germ  of  a  new  order  ....  for  that  end  two 
things  are  essential:  we  must  enlighten  men's  minds  by  dis- 
cussion, and  we  must  strengthen  their  hearts  by  fighting.  From 
that  it  follows  that  liberty,  whether  we  have  it,  or  whether  we 
merely  seek  it,  is  today  the  first  need  of  the  people  as  it  is  the 
indispensable  condition  of  our  salvation."  That  is,  in  brief, 
the  whole  method  and  programme  of  Liberal  Catholicism  as 
Lamennais  conceived  it.  The  opposition  to  his  attitude  was 
passionate  and  strong.  The  Archbishop  of  Paris  preached  and 
wrote  publicly  against  him;-^^  the  nuncio  regretted  the  violence 
of  his  attitude.2^^  His  fierce  determination  was  ascribed  on 
every  hand  to  pride  and  an  overweening  confidence  in  his  own 
conclusions.  Few  realised,  as  did  Lamennais  himself,^^^  the 
magnitude  of  the  task  he  had  undertaken.  With  the  bishops 
unitedly  against  him,  the  silence  of  Rome  was  ever  more  ex- 
asperating; and  the  death  of  Loo  XII  deprived  him  of  one  who 
was  perhaps  his  friend. ^^^  The  church  seemed  to  him  as  one 
given  up  in  the  arena  to  gladiators  and  wild  beasts.^^^  ■  Not 

«"  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  Vol.  II,  p.  6. 
"s  See  his  two  letters  in  reply,  "Oeuvres,"  II,  323  ff. 
"'  Dudon,  "Lamennais  et  le  Saint-Si6ge,"  p.  76.     Lambruschini  himself 
seems  not  to  have  disagreed  with  his  arguments. 
2"  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  27. 
"*  Ibid.,  II,  15,  and  of.  his  remarks  on  p.  18. 
2"/f>ui.,  p.  51. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        233 

even  the  Revolution  of  1830  seems  to  have  stirred  him  very 
deeply.  He  had  long  prophesied  its  coming;  and  he  valued  it 
only  as  a  sign  that  his  prevision  was  not  mistaken  ;25<'  nor  did 
he  conceal  his  view — nor  his  satisfaction — that  the  crisis  must 
eventually  end  in  a  republic.  The  situation  mainly  interested 
him  as  a  means  to  the  greater  freedom  for  which  he  was  now 
so  anxious.  "Chacun,"  he  wrote,^^^  "chacun  doit  aujourd'hui 
chercher  sa  siirete  dans  la  siirete  de  tous,  c'est  a  dire  dans 
une  liberte  commune.  La  liberte,  c'est  le  droit  et  la  faculte  de 
se  defendre  contretoutevolontearbitraireet  oppressive."  The 
problem  was  the  translation  of  that  attitude  into  terms  of 
Catholic  life. 

He  did  not  embark  upon  its  solution  unprepared.  His  re- 
treat at  La  Chgnaie  had  for  some  time  been  a  kind  of  communal 
retreat  for  those  few  close  friends  who,  like  Gerbet  and  Salinis, 
thought  as  he  did  upon  the  fundamental  questions.  As  early 
as  1825  he  had  dreamed  of  opening  there  a  kind  of  institute, 
where,  with  a  few  chosen  comrades,  he  might  work  and  think 
and  pray.  At  Malestroit  he  had  founded  the  little  Congregation 
of  Saint  Peter  which  won  the  highest  praise  from  Leo  XllP^ 
Its  object  was,  above  all,  to  harmonise  the  results  of  science 
and  religion.  "Lorsque  I'Eglise  tenoit  entre  ses  mains  le  scep- 
tre de  la  science,"  he  wrote,^^^  *'  c'etait  une  des  causes  de  I'ascend- 
ant  qu'elle  avait  sur  les  esprits."  That  was,  perhaps,  a  some- 
what chimerical  ambition  to  anyone  who  had  any  historic 
sense  of  the  Catholic  church.  But  over  his  companions,  as 
even  a  hostile  witness  like  Wiseman  bears  testimony ,2^^  his 
ascendancy  was  amazing.  It  was  under  his  segis  that  Rohr- 
bacher  began  that  history  of  the  church  which,  if  its  lustre  be 
dim  now,  was  for  its  time  a  mighty  undertaking.  Bore  came 
there;  the  grim  Lacordaire  who  came  to  doubt  remained  to 
bless ;  Sainte-Beuve  felt  its  influence ;  and  the  letters  of  Maurice 
de  Guerin  bear  witness  to  the  joy  that  tender  and  graceful  spirit 

^"Ibid.,  II,  161. 

2"  Ibid.,  II,  160. 

^2  Dudon,  op.  cit.  p.  70.  M.  Dudon  attributes  this  praise  to  mere 
politeness  on  the  Pope's  part;  but  when  one  considers  the  general  relation 
between  Leo  and  Lamennais  that  conclusion  seems  unduly  sceptical. 

2^*  SpuUer  op.  cit.,  p.  161. 

2^^  Cf.  his  "Four  Last  Popes,"  p.  301  f. 


234        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

felt  in  the  friendshii)  of  his  master.  And  a  Uttle  later  towards 
the  end  of  November,  1830,  there  came  to  his  aid  the  ablest 
and  most  renowned  of  his  disciples  in  Montalembert.^^  With 
such  men  as  these  he  could  indeed  face  the  future  without  fear. 

If,  at  first,  the  Revolution  of  1830  seemed  hostile  to  the 
Catholic  forces,  it  soon  became  evident  that  this  was  in  fact 
a  passing  mood.^^s  The  nation,  as  a  whole,  found  its  full  sat- 
isfaction in  having  deposed  the  king  who  had  broken  the 
Charter  of  1814;  and  it  was  sufficiently  Catholic  in  character 
to  indulge  in  no  more  than  sporadic  and  momentary  excesses. 
Nor  did  the  government  show  itself  more  inimical.  The  new 
dynasty  was,  after  all,  too  frail  to  embark  on  the  troubled  seas 
of  religious  persecution;  and  if  the  Charter  of  1830  was  more 
liberal  than  its  predecessor  it  in  nowise  deprived  Catholicism 
of  its  pre-eminence.  Lamennais  did  not  disguise  from  himself 
that  difficult  times  lay  ahead;  but  he  beheved  that  the  sup- 
port of  the  Orleans  dynasty  would  lead  to  the  protection  of 
those  rights  by  which  alone  the  existence  of  religion  was  possi- 
ble.^^  Almost  immediately  the  means  of  active  propaganda 
were  to  hand  in  the  foundation  of  that  journal  L'Avenir  which 
in  its  feverishly  brilliant  career,  did  more,  perhaps,  than  any 
other  weapon  to  fasten  the  roots  of  liberal  doctrine  deep  down 
in  the  soil  of  Catholicism.  ''Son  but,"  Lamennais  told  his 
fricnds,^^^  "(est)  d'unir,  sur  la  base  de  la  liberte,  les  hommes 
de  toutes  les  opinions  attaches  a  I'ordre."  At  almost  the  same 
time  there  was  instituted  a  society  for  the  defense  of  reUgious 
liberty .2^^  It  undertook  to  support  every  religious  school.  It 
protected  the  clergy  from  wrongful  prosecution.  It  safeguarded 
the  right  of  association.  It  desired  to  act  as  the  common  link 
by  which  all  religious  societies  in  France  should  be  linked 
together  for  mutual  protection  against  all  attacks  on  the  liberty 
of  their  faith.-''"  Both  journal  and  society  are  simply  Lamennais; 
nowhere  is  there  any  thought  in  either  of  which  he  is  not  the 

^^  The  first  volume  of  Lecanuet's  admirable  "Ijife  of  MontaUiinbert" 
tlotails  the  history  of  their  relations  in  full. 

256  Cf.  Debidour,  op.  cit.,  p.  412. 

257  "Corrosp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  168  f. 

258  Ibid.,  II,  173. 

2"  Ibid.,  II,  185,  and  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  181  f. 

2"'^  See  their  statiites  sununariscd  in  Debidour,  op.  cit.,  421. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        235 


directive  inspiration.  His  letters  take  on  a  note  of  optimism  by 
which,  in  general,  they  were  rarely  distinguished.^^^  He  seems 
clearly  to  have  felt  the  greatness  of  the  work  he  had  undertaken; 
nor  was  he  any  longer  possessed  by  the  old  terrors  of  its  futility. 
The  Avenir  lasted  for  a  year,  when  the  hostility  of  Rome  com- 
pelled its  suspension.  Certainly  no  journal  has  ever  more 
splendidly  fulfilled  its  programme.  Its  very  disappearance 
was  important;  for  it  marked  the  first  of  the  three  great  defeats 
suffered  by  liberal  Catholics  in  the  first  century  of  their  exist- 
ence.262  Yet  in  the  short  period  of  its  existence  it  was  able  to 
elaborate  a  political  theory  of  which  no  one  can  as  yet  foretell 
the  complete  potentialities.  Lamennais  himself  has  told  us  the 
essence  of  the  doctrines  he  therein  preached.  It  started  out 
from  the  assumption  that  the  right  to  command,  which  he  calls 
sovereignty,  belongs  to  God  alone  ;2^^  every  one  is  dependent 
upon  Him  and  therefore  no  person  can  possess,  in  the  strict 
sense,  sovereign  powers.  As  a  consequence,  all  men  are  equal 
in  their  rights;  for  their  rights  are  derived  from  their  nature 
which  come  equally  from  God.  Liberty  is  thus  the  essential 
condition  of  civil  institutions.  The  power  which  is  given  to 
rulers  is  derived  from  the  agreement  of  men  to  arrange  for  the 
protection  of  their  liberties.  Rulers,  as  a  result,  possess  only 
that  power  which  is  judged  by  the  citizens  of  a  state  necessary 
to  the  conservation  of  the  law  of  their  being. -^^  Men  have  thus 
imprescriptible  rights  and  it  follows  that  liberalism  must  always 
be  the  basis  of  their  existence.  The  Revolution  and  the  Restora- 
tion alike  denied  these  truths;  it  was  by  a  policy  of  concerted 
violence  that  in  their  different  ways  each  sought  to  govern. 
The  monarchy  of  the  Restoration,  moreover,  used  rehgion  as  a 
political  weapon  and  thereby  brought  it  into  discredit.^^^    They 

^^^  e.  g.  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  177,  and  cf.  Laveille,  op.  cit.,  258. 

^^2 1  suppose  it  would  generally  be  admitted  that  the  history  of  liberal 
Catholicism  can  reasonably  be  divided  into  the  Lamennais  period;  that 
which  culminates  in  their  defeat  at  the  Vatican  council;  and  that  which 
culminates  in  the  issue  of  the  encyclical  pascendi.  I  have  discussed  the 
significance  of  the  second  episode  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  my  "Problem 
of  Sovereignty."    The  last  is  discussed  below. 

!«i3  "Oeuvres,"  II,  362. 

2"  Ibid.,  II,  363. 

2«5  Ibid.,  II,  366. 


236        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

deprived  it,  in  fact,  of  the  character  of  a  rehgion  by  taking  from 
it  its  character  of  independence.  They  used  it  as  a  means 
against  that  democratic  regime  which  is  ahvays  incompatible 
with  monarchy  ;2'''^  and  they  bought  its  comphance  by  the  gift 
of  money,  of  dignity  and  of  power.  But  a  struggle  inevitably 
arose  when  the  people  came  to  realise  that  the  state  was  being 
used  for  the  interest  of  a  privileged  class.  The  people  demanded 
their  rights  and  they  did  not  hesitate  to  take  them.  A  new 
order  was  born;  and  it  was  to  preserve  Catholicism  from  the 
evils  by  which  it  was  threatened  that  the  Avenir  came  into 
being.2"  It  is  upon  that  foundation  that  its  effort  was  made. 
It  insisted  upon  the  separation  of  religion  and  pohtics;  a  reli- 
gion which  is  endowed  by  the  state  is  no  longer  a  rehgion  but  an 
establishment.  It  asked  for  the  right  to  establish  schools,  the 
abohtion  of  episcopal  nomination,  the  complete  independence 
of  church  and  state.  For  the  essence  of  their  doctrine  was  to 
look  upon  Catholicism  as  in  itself  a  sufficient  way  of  life,  bound 
not  to  earth  but  to  God.  So,  by  separating  itself  from  the 
world,  it  secured  the  conditions  of  its  freedom.  So  it  became 
the  mirror  of  that  which  it  was  destined  to  enshrine.^^^ 

There  is  no  article  in  the  yltJemr  throughout  its  history  which 
is  not  faithful  to  this  programme.  It  is  difficult  to  do  full  jus- 
tice to  the  eloquent  passion  with  which  it  is  throughout  advo- 
cated. It  is  clear  enough  that  Lamennais  was  happy  in  the 
work  of  propagation.  His  letters  reveal  a  new  faith  in  things 
which  triumi)hs  over  the  difficult  physical  conditions  under 
which  he  laboured.  He  saw  the  work  grow  on  every  hand.  The 
response  to  his  charitable  appeals  was  remarkable.^^^  The 
demand  for  men  of  letters  whom  he  could  trust  came  from  every 
part  of  France.^^"  They  gave  active  support  to  the  Belgian 
Revolution  and  the  Polish  insurrection.-'^^  They  followed  the 
efforts  of  O'Connell  in  Ireland  with  eager  enthusiasm.^^^  They 
had  feelings  of  deep  sympathy  for  the  kindred  ideals  of  Gorres 

*68  Ibid.,  II,  367. 

267  Ibid.,  II,  368. 

268  Ibid.,  II,  370. 

26a  Cf .  "Ocuvres,"  II,  368. 

"0  "Corrcsp."  (ed.  Forgucs),  II,  193. 

^''^  Avenir,  no.  of  Sept.  17,  31.     "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  189. 

"2  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  202. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        237 

and  Dollinger.^^^  They  dreamed  of  a  general  union  of  Catholic 
forces  throughout  the  world  of  which  the  end  was  to  be  the 
attainment  of  a  general  freedom  for  all  peoples.^^*  They  pro- 
tested against  the  enmity  of  science  and  religion;  for  Cathol- 
icism dare  not  fear  truth  otherwise  it  was  not  worthy  of  preser- 
vation. Nor  is  it  difficult  to  see  that  in  the  process  of  work 
Lamennais  became  more  and  more  convinced  of  the  rightness  of 
his  attitude ;  certainly  not  even  in  the  dark  days  of  his  suspen- 
sion did  his  conviction  for  a  moment  falter. 

It  is  not  easy  to  mistake  their  system.  On  the  morrow  of  a 
revolution  they  saw,  as  they  deemed,  but  two  things  still  firm 
amid  the  universal  disorder:  the  action  of  providence  and  the 
need  for  liberty.  It  is  with  their  integral  reconciliation  that 
they  are,  above  all,  concerned."^  It  is  in  effect,  a  demand  that 
the  spiritual  future  of  the  church  be  based  upon  an  acceptance 
of  what,  in  the  most  Uberal  estimate,  the  Revolution  may  be 
taken  to  mean;  with  the  addition  that  where  the  Revolution 
misunderstood  the  significance  of  corporate  freedom,-^^  Lamen- 
nais insists  upon  its  attainment.  From  that  basis  they  make 
their  judgments.  Their  connexion  with  Rome  must  be  uninter- 
rupted and  direct;  to  attempt  the  control  of  such  communica- 
tion is  an  intolerable  and  oppressive  surveillance.  For  it  means 
that  the  papal  power  over  the  church  is  reduced  to  a  nulUty, 
and  without  that  power  the  church  can  have  no  real  existence.^^' 
They  insist  on  the  right  of  association.  The  holding  of  opinions 
implies  the  right  to  take  means  for  their  protection.  Man  is  so 
pre-eminently  a  social  being  that  without  such  right  his  life  is 
deprived  of  half  its  meaning.-'^  They  demand  hberty  of  instruc- 
tion; for  it  is  surely  clear  that  without  the  opportunity  to  educate 
their  children  in  Catholic  principles  they  have  no  means  of  en- 
surmg  what  they  believe  to  be  their  salvation.^''^  Nor  does  their 
demand  end  there.  They  recognise  that  religious  hberty  is  the 
offspring  of  political  liberty.    That  was  why  they  rejoiced  at  the 

^^^Avenir,  Nov.  21,  30;   Dec.  2,  30;   May  11,  31. 

"4  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  213  f. 

"5  Avenir,  Oct.  16,  1830. 

2'^Cf.  the  essay  on  "Administrative  Syndicalism." 

2"  Avenir,  Oct.  26,  1830. 

278  Avenir,  Oct.  30,  30. 

"9  Ibid.,  Nov.  26,  30. 


238     'AUTHORITY    IX   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Polish  insurrection. ^s''  That  was  why  the  power  of  government 
was  by  its  very  character  an  object  of  suspicion  in  their  eyes.  It 
was  the  very  power  of  government  which  really  lay  at  the  bot- 
tom of  their  advocacy  of  separation.  It  was  an  historical  deduc- 
tion from  their  experience  that  a  church  so  fettered  cannot  from 
the  nature  of  things  be  free.  Their  desire  for  liberty  of  the  press 
is  only  the  implicit  translation  of  liberty  of  thought  into  terms  of 
action.  Their  insistence  on  such  a  form  of  election  as  will  en- 
able the  suffrage  to  be  exercised  by  the  humblest  men  is  a  result 
of  their  desire  to  give  power  the  broadest  basis  of  consent;  and 
it  was  for  that  reason  that  Lamennais  declared  himself  opposed 
to  the  existence  of  an  hereditary  chamber.^^^  Nor  was  it  less 
consistent  with  his  theory  of  power  that  he  should  have  de- 
manded administrative  decentralisation.  It  was  part  of  the 
natural  right  to  self-government  that  he  should  desire  to  mini- 
mise the  evil  influence  of  the  absorptive  effect  of  the  Napoleonic 
system.  If  we  once  admit  the  right  of  a  people  to  look  after  its 
own  affairs  it  becomes  sufficiently  obvious  that  federalism  more 
nearly  meets  the  needs  of  a  complex  society  than  the  unitary 
state. ^^^  Nor  was  he  illogical  in  his  view  that  only  in  the  in- 
creasing apphcation  of  intelligence  to  public  questions,  the  contin- 
uous realisation  that  this  is  a  changing  world  and  that  Catholicism 
must  meet  the  implications  of  its  changing  perspective,  could 
there  be  a  victory  for  his  principles.^^^  In  the  end,  it  is  to  that  con- 
ception that  all  liberal  Catholicism  goes  back.  The  idea  of  a  de- 
veloping tradition  was  for  him  the  simple  deduction  from  the 
obvious  fact  that  Catholicism  was  a  living  personality  which,  if 
true  to  itself,  was  surely  destined  to  conquer  the  world.  If  he 
states  his  belief,  less  in  terms  of  a  dissatisfaction  with  its  narrow 
dogmas  than  of  discontent  with  its  narrow  political  outlook, 
that  only  means  that  he  was  the  child  of  his  age.  The 
need  of  the  moment  was  political;  the  scientific  criticism  of 
Catholic  dogmatics  began  to  penetrate  only  a  quarter  of  a 
century  later.  Yet  his  anxiety  for  a  learned  priesthood  is  suffi- 
cient evidence  that  he  was  not  without  some  understanding  of 
the  need  that  one  day  would  come. 

"» Ibid.,  Sept.  17,  31. 

28'  Ibid.,  May  28,  31. 

^^^Ibid.,  June  28,  31. 

2M/6id.,  June  30,  31. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        229 

What,  then,  emerges  from  it  all?  The  real  problem  by  which 
he  was  confronted  was  the  problem  of  government.  He  did  not 
for  one  moment  doubt  the  eternal  truth  of  the  fundamental 
maxims  for  which  Christianity  stands.  But  he  had  come  to  the 
stage  where  it  was  necessary  to  distinguish  between  the  collec- 
tive conscience  of  Christian  society — the  general  will  which  lay 
buried  beneath  the  appearance  of  evil  and  misunderstanding 
— and  the  consciously  formulated  practice  of  those  who  actually 
governed  it.  He  had  come  to  disbelieve  that  the  church  could 
be  fully  represented  by  her  ministers.  What  she  was,  no  one 
body  of  men  could  claim  to  be.  She  was  essentially  a  brother- 
hood of  a  life  to  be  lived  on  certain  principles  and  the  fundamen- 
tal test  of  her  worth  was  the  regulation  of  her  conduct  in  the  terms 
of  those  principles.  That  was  why  he  was  prepared  to  reject 
the  authority  of  the  state.  As  a  consistent  Christian  he  could 
not  regard  himself  as  linked  to  what  was  in  idea  neither  religious 
nor  free.  And  that  sense  of  antagonism  to  secular  things  made 
him  anxious  to  insist  in  every  particular  upon  the  distinct  and 
corporate  life  of  the  church — its  self-sufficiency,  its  own  right 
to  freedom,  to  government,  to  development.  It  was  for  the 
expression  of  its  personaUty  that  he  above  all  cared ;  and  he  did 
not  greatly  mind  that  the  sense  of  power  a  state-relation  might 
add  to  it  should  be  withdrawn.  It  did  not  greatly  matter  to  him 
that  he  did  not — perhaps  could  not — attempt  the  definition  of 
Catholicism.  For  him  the  vital  test  was — as  it  is  the  vital  test 
of  every  society — that  he  felt  its  meaning  deeply  enough  to  be 
able  to  share  fully  and  richly  in  its  life.  He  would  never — cer- 
tainly, at  least,  before  1834, — have  denied  that  the  church  must 
actively  organise  her  strength;  his  passionate  defence  of  ultra- 
montanism  is  the  sufficient  proof  of  that.  But  he  was  virtually 
claiming  already  a  right  to  judge  it,  was  reserving  for  himself 
the  power  to  insist  that,  when  the  last  order  has  been  issued, 
it  was,  after  all,  a  matter  for  his  own  judgment  whether  he  would 
accept  it.  All  his  work  had  gone  to  show  that  he  had,  as  much 
as  any  Catholic  authority,  a  deep  sense  of  the  disintegrating 
effect  of  schism,  a  wish  that  there  should  be  unity  of  purpose 
even  if  there  were  variety  of  effort.  He  had  the  deep  and  abiding 
sense  of  the  church  as  an  apostolic  society  of  which  the  mission 
was  the  preparation  of  the  city  of  God.    But  that  is  clearly  a 


240        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Catholicism  distinct  in  a  fundamental  sense  from  the  sectarian 
orthodoxy  of  the  schools  or  the  political  ambitions  of  Rome.  It 
is,  as  the  greatest  of  his  successors  said  of  the  true  Catholicism  of 
his  own  time,  "simply  a  spiritual  society  organised  purely  in  the 
interests  of  religion  and  morality."^ 

Such  an  attitude,  of  course,  involves  the  living  of  one's  faith 
rather  than  the  observance  of  its  dogma  or  its  ritual.  Here, 
surely,  is  one  of  the  keys  to  Lamennais'  hatred  of  Gallicanism; 
for,  as  he  interpreted  it,  it  rendered  impossible  any  full  realisa- 
tion of  the  Christian  hfe.  For  Gallicanism,  as  it  had  developed 
under  the  Restoration,^^^  had  become  an  exclusive  and  intolerant 
search  for  power.  It  had  lost  sight  of  the  significance  of  the 
spirit  of  the  church,  in  the  effort  to  re-assert  a  speciaUsed  and 
departmental  control  over  a  section  of  the  thoughts  of  men; 
and  it  was  not  very  careful  as  to  the  means  it  used  to  that  end.^® 
With  such  an  attitude  he  had  no  sympathy.  As  an  essay  in  the 
ideal  church  for  which  he  lived  it  seemed  to  him  abortive  by  the 
very  fact  that  it  trod  the  path  of  the  state.  The  desires  he 
cherished  were  different.  A  free  church  in  a  free  state  was  re- 
served for  other  and  greater  destinies.  It  would  link  itself  to 
the  current  of  social  change  which  was  to  fashion  a  new  world. 
Science  and  liberty  would  be  its  comrades,  and  it  would  advance 
in  kinship  with  the  profoundest  hopes  of  democracy.-^^  If  it 
rejected  the  sovereignty  of  kings,  it  was  only  that  it  might  be 
true  to  itself.  If  it  is  suspicious  of  authority,  it  is  only  because 
it  has  experienced  its  evils.  If  he  was  prepared  still  to  maintain 
extra  ecclesiasm  salus  nulla,  what  he  meant  by  the  church  was 
no  longer  obedience  to  a  single  power.  He  believed,  it  is  true, 
in  the  unified  governance  of  the  church;   but  he  believed  in  it 

2M  Tyrrell,  "A  Much-abused  Letter,"  p.  64.  I  do  not  think  there  is  a  sen- 
tencein  this  magnificent  justification  that  Lamennais  would  have  repudiated. 

28*  One  has  to  distinguish  between  different  hands;  that  of  Gr^oire,  or 
that  which  goes  back  to  Porte-Royal,  are  very  different  from  that  of 
Frayssinous. 

288  It  is  interesting  to  note  Macaulay's  deep  indignation  against  the 
church  of  the  Restoration.  On  the  margin  of  Paul-Louis  Courier's  pam- 
phlet "Response  aux  Anonymes,"  No.  2  he  wrote  "Worthy  of  Demosthe- 
nes. It  makes  my  blood  boU  against  that  accursed  tyranny."  Trevelyan, 
Life  (Nelson  ed.),  II,  502. 

287  "Oeuvres,"  II,  372. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        241 

only  so  long  as  that  governance  was  in  accord  with  Uberal  doc- 
trine. It  is  clear  that  he  is  already  in  the  stage  when  in  a  choice 
between  what  Tyrrell  called  "the  only  absolute  duty  and  the 
highest  sort  of  conditional  duty"^^^  there  could  be  no  alternative. 
That  is  not  to  say  he  was  a  Protestant.  His  sense  of  the  dangers 
of  religious  individualism  were  far  too  keen  for  that  to  be  pos- 
sible. It  meant  only  that  his  sense  of  the  church  was  such  that 
he  could  give  to  her  only  the  best  that  was  in  himself.  The  real 
problem  was  her  attitude  to  his  gift. 

VIII.  THE  APPEAL  TO  ROME 

Had  Lamennais  been  content  with  the  composition  of  a  hymn 
to  liberty  it  is  possible  that  his  views,  if  they  involved  discussion, 
would  yet  have  avoided  condemnation.  But,  from  the  outset, 
both  he  and  his  disciples  were  anxious  to  promote  their  utili- 
sation. Within  a  month  of  its  first  pubUcation,  Lacordaire 
urged  the  French  bishops  not  to  accept  the  nominations  of 
Louis  Philippe,28^  while  Lamennais  demanded  the  immediate 
,  abrogation  of  royal  control.  The  result  was  a  prosecution  by  the 
government  in  which  both  were  acquitted. ^^'^  If,  as  Lamennais 
himself  thought,  the  verdict  wrought  immense  good,^^^  it  was  yet 
only  the  beginning  of  their  difficulties.  His  own  sense  of  their 
contingency  is  clear  from  his  letter  of  a  month  later  to  Cardinal 
Weld.  It  assures  him  of  their  entire  good  will  towards  Rome, 
their  humble  dependence  upon  the  apal  commands.^^  He  was 
soon  repudiating  calumnies  which  accused  him — as  falsely  as 
intelligibly — of  a  desire  to  destroy  the  episcopate. ^^^  But  more 
serious  was  the  attack  on  their  democratic  principles  from  the 
Father-general  of  the  Theatines,  Ventura;  not  only  was  he  a 
friend  of  Lamennais,  but  he  was  well  acquainted  with  Roman 
opinion.^^*  Lamennais,  indeed,  more  than  refuted  his  objections 
but  the  criticism,  published  as  it  was  in  the  most  intransigeant 

288  Tyrrell,  op.  cit.  99. 

"9  Avenir,  Nov.  25,  30. 

"0  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  216-223. 

2"  "Corresp."  (cd.  Forgues),  II,  197. 

"2  Ihid.,  II,  198,  Feb.  27,  131. 

2'3  JUd.,  II,  199-202. 

"^  Dudon,  op.  cit.,  p.  94. 


242        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

of  the  Gallican  journals,  was  full  of  significancc.^^^  Bishops 
began  to  urge  him  to  cease  his  propaganda.^^^  It  was  bruited 
abroad  that  the  late  nuncio  had  denounced  him  as  one  of  the 
greatest  enemies  by  which  the  church  was  confronted.^^^  The 
Jesuits  began  to  cast  subtle  doubts  upon  the  orthodoxy  of  his 
principles.2^^  Dupanloup,  then  on  the  threshold  of  his  immense 
influence,  had  begun  to  intrigue  for  his  condemnation.  Lamen- 
nais,  he  said,^^^  "entraine  les  jeunes  pretres  dans  I'independence 
politique  et  la  rebellion  religieuse."  Nor  did  Rome  speak  as  he 
had  hoped.  "La  on  ne  voit  rien,"  he  wrote  of  the  papacy ,^°° 
"on  ne  comprend  rien  encore;  on  est  plonge,  perdu  dans  les 
tenebres  exterieures  des  interets  terrestres,  qui  ne  laissent  pen- 
6trer  aucun  rayon  de  lumiere."  Priests  who  were  suspected  of 
adhesion  to  his  doctrines  were  attacked;  and  the  clerical  sub- 
scriptions to  the  Avenir  suffered  a  forcible  decline.^"^  They  were 
threatened  by  interdict  and  intrigue,  and  Rome  gave  support  to 
those  accusations.  Their  demand  for  encouragement  from  Rome 
met  with  no  response.^''^  xhe  note  of  sadness  begins  to  reappear 
in  his  letters.  "Ce  n'est  pas  le  courage  que  je  perds",  he  an- 
swered a  friend  who  urged  him  not  to  lose  hope,^°^  "mais  la  voix; 
je  prevois  que  bientot  elle  nous  manquera  aucun  moyen  de 
resister  a  1'  opposition  episcopale."  In  October  of  1831  he  wrote 
to  Montalembert  that  it  was  hopeless  to  continue  in  the  face  of 
such  relentless  antagonism.^"'*  Lacordaire  urged  that  they  go 
to  Rome  to  justify  their  attitude;  and  though  Montalembert 
seems  already  to  have  feared  condemnation,  Lamennais  him- 
self insisted  that  it  was  impossible.^°^  On  the  15th  of  November 
the  Avenir  was  suspended,  and  the  three  friends  set  out,  "as  did 

^^  Lamennais'  reply  is  in  the  Avenir  for  Feb.  12,  31.  Ventura  published 
his  criticism  as  an  open  letter  in  the  Gazelle  de  France. 

"8  "Correspondence,"  II,  214. 

2"  Ibid.,  II,  225. 

238Dudon,  op.  cit.,_95. 

""Lagrange,  "Dupanloup,"  I,  121. 

300  "Corrcsp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  213. 

^oi  Ibid.,  II,  227  f. 

'"2  Ibid.,  II,  228.  This  is  doubtless  a  reference  to  the  letter  to  Cardinal 
Weld. 

303  Ibid.,  II,  230. 

'M  "Lettres  h  Montalembert,"  pp.  6-7. 

3"^  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  255. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        243 

the  soldiers  of  Israel"  to  convince  the  papacy  of  the  honesty  of 
their  intentions  and  the  justice  of  their  cause.^"^ 

The  Roman  adventure  is  to  Lamennais  what,  three  centuries 
before,  the  visit  of  Luther  was  to  that  greatest  of  schismatics. 
It  is  the  real  turning-point  of  his  life.  It  brought  to  the  final  test 
his  theory  of  the  part  that  Rome  was  to  play  in  the  governance 
of  the  world.  He  had  never  denied  the  omnicompetence  of  the 
Pope.  He  had  always  insisted  that  the  pleriitudo  potestatis  was, 
in  this  realm,  at  least,  justified  by  its  exercise.  At  the  distri- 
bution of  religious  power  he  had  frankly  scoffed.  He  had  again 
and  again  been  urgent  as  to  the  necessity  of  monarchical  and 
unified  direction  by  the  church.  Not  even  when  he  had  come, 
by  1829,  to  realise  the  necessity  of  liberal  principles  had  he 
changed  his  convictions  in  this  regard.  Nor  did  he  doubt  that 
Rome  would  welcome  the  opportunities  that  freedom  offered. 
There  is  not  a  tithe  of  evidence  that  Lamennais  expected  an 
unfavourable  reception;  but  the  amazing  dishonesty  of  his 
treatment  completed  in  him  a  disillusion  of  which  the  first  seeds 
were  already  sown.  What  he  learned  was  the  danger  of  unified 
authority  even  in  the  Catholic  church.  He  was  defeated  by  pa- 
pal unwillingness  to  separate  the  spheres  of  temporal  and  spirit- 
ual. He  found  that,  in  thought,  at  any  rate,  the  papal  ideal 
was  still  the  dream  of  a  worldly  dominion  against  which  three 
centuries  of  reformers  had  uttered  in  vain  their  protest.  He 
learned  that  the  papacy  regarded  itself  as  a  temporal  power 
which  had  benefited  by  the  possession  of  certain  valuable  spirit- 
ual weapons.  The  Rome  of  which  he  dreamed  vanished  the 
more  speedily  as  he  contemplated  it  in  actuality.  It  was  a 
Rome  which  was  unwilling  to  regain  a  spiritual  empire  if  secular 
dominion  must  be  sacrificed. 

It  is,  in  fact,  clear  enough — even  when  the  evidence  arrayed 
against  him  by  Rome  itself  is  considered^°^ — that  the  main 
grounds  of  his  condemnation  were  not  religious  but  pohtical  in 
character.  Religious  they  could  not  be,  for  the  sufficient  reason 
that  to  the  composition  of  his  liberal  Catholicism  no  element  of 

S06  "Oeuvres,"  II,  480.    Cf.  Corresp.  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  231. 

307  Cf.  Dudon,  "Lamennais  et  le  Saiut-Siege"  for  the  orthodox  Roman  in- 
terpretation of  this  time.  It  is  such  criticism  as  his  that  has  led  me  to  use 
Lamennais'  "Affaires  de  Rome"  only  as  a  check  upon  the  immediately 
contemporaneous  documents. 


244        AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE 

dogma  contributed.  Gregory  XVI  sacrificed  him  to  the  fear 
that  the  prolongation  of  liis  active  career  might  embroil  him 
with  the  governments  of  Europe.  The  age  was  not  liberal  in 
its  outlook.  The  papal  states  themselves  were  the  centre  of 
national  disaffection.  The  English  administration  of  Ireland 
was  rarely  more  harsh  and  never  more  unpopular.  Russia  was 
breaking  into  pieces  the  men  who  dreamed  of  a  reconstructed 
Poland.  Under  the  shadow  of  liberal  phrases  the  Orleanist 
monarchy  was  erecting  a  despotism  not  less  ugly  than  the  old. 
In  Prussia  an  omnicompetent  bureaucracy  was  codifying  the 
maxims  of  Machiavelli  upon  the  relations  of  religion  to  the  state. 
Austria  seemed,  under  the  oppressive  reactionism  of  Metternich, 
to  confound  the  application  of  the  penal  code  with  that  of  the 
Beatitudes.  It  was  the  antithesis  of  such  doctrine  that  Lamen- 
nais  came  to  urge;  and  what  he  offered  to  Rome  was  an  alter- 
native in  which  the  nobler  choice  could  have  been  taken  only 
by  men  who  did  not  deem  themselves  bound  by  the  ordinary 
canons  of  secular  diplomacy. 

The  powers  themselves  did  not  fail  to  urge  Rome  along  this 
course.  Simultaneously  with  his  arrival  in  Rome,  the  French 
ambassador  demanded  his  condemnation  ;^°^  and  he  was  able 
to  report  to  his  government  that  the  pope  was  as  compliant  as 
he  could  desirc.^"^  The  weight  of  Metternich's  incomparable 
authority  was  used  to  the  same  purpose.  "Elle  appartient,"  he 
wrote  of  the  Avenir,^^^  *'au  desordre,  comme  les  feuilles  de- 
vouees  au  pur  radicalisme."  The  Archbishop  of  Paris  was 
urgent  in  his  request  for  immediate  and  adverse  action,  while 
he  skilfully  mingled  praise  of  intention  with  hostiUty  to  result.^" 
Even  Russian  influence  was  exercised  for  the  same  end.^^^  The 
commission  appointed  by  the  Pope  to  deal  with  Lamennais' 
doctrines  could  by  no  possible  fortune  have  been  favourable 
to  him.  Ventura  had  already  published  his  suspicions.  Lam- 
bruschini  was,  to  say  the  least,  distrustful  of  the  whole  tend- 
ency of  which  Lamennais  was  representative.  Soglia  had,  to- 
wards the  end  of   1830,  Avritten  to  Lamennais  urging  him  to 

308  Dudon,  op.  cit.,  110  f. 

309/fti(/.,  113. 

*'oihid.,  118. 
3"  Ibid.,  122. 
312  Ibid.,  129. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        245 

retrace  his  steps.^^^  Means  were  taken  to  prevent  direct  access 
to  the  Pope;  and  if  they  were  allowed  to  present  a  memorial  in 
which  their  position  was  defended,  still  Lamennais  began  to 
feel  the  amazing  falsity  of  his  position.  What,  after  all,  could 
Gregory  do,  a  simple  monk  caught,  as  they  were  caught,  in  the 
meshes  of  a  labyrinthine  system?^^*  The  sense  of  embarrass- 
ment on  both  sides  was  very  painful.  "Notre  demarche," 
wrote  Montalembert,^^^  "si  catholique  et  si  simple,  a  jet6  la 
cour  de  Rome  dans  un  embarras  qu'elle  ne  nous  a  pas  pardonne; 
uniquement  occupes  de  leurs  interets  temporels,  qui  se  trouvent 
dans  la  position  du  plus  critique,  les  cardinaux  et  les  prelats  qui 
entourent  le  saint-pere  voient  avec  le  plus  grand  mecontente- 
ment  les  efforts  que  nous  avons  faits  pour  detacher  la  religion  et 
FEglise  de  la  causes  des  rois  qui  sont,  a  leurs  yeux,  la  Providence 
vivante  de  ce  monde."  It  was  no  more  than  the  simple  truth. 

On  every  side,  indeed,  the  situation  conspired  against  them. 
If  the  pope  was  uniquely  sovereign  he  still  had  need  of  his  dele- 
gates and  he  was  compelled,  in  some  degree,  to  give  ear  to  their 
complaints.  So,  even  before  any  decisive  action  was  taken,  he 
accused  Lamennais  of  sowing  discontent  among  the  French 
clergy ,^^^  and  to  rid  himself  of  a  troublesome  visitor,  he  fore- 
shadowed a  long  examination  of  doctrine  which  made  his  con- 
tinued stay  in  Rome  inadvisable.  The  fact  of  the  matter  was, 
as  Lamennais  began  to  reaHse,^^^  that  Rome  had  a  choice  be- 
tween the  liberalism  of  her  original  inception  and  the  temporal 
interests  resultant  on  her  massive  organisation,  and  she  was  not 
prepared  to  sacrifice  substantial  material  possessions.  Before 
the  pilgrims  separated,  they  were  allowed  to  see  the  Pope;  but 
discourse  on  the  weather  and  the  sardonic  offer  of  snuff  stifled 
from  the  outset  all  effort  at  discussion.^^^  Lacordaire  returned 
to  France,  Montalembert  set  out  for  Germany.  Lamennais 
himself,  for  the  moment,  remained  in  Rome.  His  stay  there 
was  only  serving  the  more  firmly  to  convince  him  that  it  was 
essential  to  continue  his  work.    He  began  with  almost  feverish 

313  Ibid.,  135. 

"4  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  II,  92. 

315  Dudon,  op.  cit.,  151. 

316  Ibid.,  154. 

317  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  II,  99. 

31^  See  Montalembert's  account  of  tlio  interview  in  Leeanuet's  life,  I,  228. 


246        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

energy  to  draw  up  programmes  of  detailed  future  activity.^^^ 
He  began  to  write  a  treatise  on  the  ills  by  which  the  church  was 
oppressed.  Meanwhile  the  French  ambassador  was  able  to 
inform  his  government  that  Rome  was  set  firmly  against  all 
such  liberalising  innovation. ^^'^  The  revolt  that  simultane- 
ously broke  out  in  the  papal  states  was  not  without  its  lesson. 
If  liberalism  involved  the  occupation  of  Ancona  by  an  Austrian 
garrison — a  step  which  seemed  likely  to  embroil  Gregory  with 
the  rest  of  Europe^^^ — he  would  have  none  of  it.  The  French 
bishops  gave  him  all  the  help  he  could  desire.  Lamennais' 
enemies,  to  the  papal  satisfaction,  drew  up  a  formidable  list  of 
his  suggested  heresies.^^^  Upon  their  basis  Lambruschini  re- 
ported in  favour  of  action.  The  sacred  Congregation  at  last 
settled  down  to  the  final  stage  and  recommended  formally  that 
his  programme  should  be  condemned.^^* 

It  meant  the  rejection  of  a  church  which  should  pursue  a 
religious  avocation.  It  meant  insistence  upon  the  belief  that 
Rome,  whatever  her  interests  in  the  other  world,  has  a  very 
definite  connexion  with  the  secular  problems  of  the  present.  No 
one  who  reads  the  correspondence  of  Lamennais  in  Italy  can 
doubt  that  this  was  the  foremost  impression  defeat  would  make 
upon  his  mind.  Rome  already  seemed  to  him,  morally,  a  desert 
where  none  could  breathe.^^*  He  did  not  in  any  sense  blame  the 
Pope  for  his  silence;  but  he  regarded  him  as  the  tool  of  corrupt 
and  ambitious  men.^^^  It  is  certain  that  at  this  time  at  any  rate 
he  had  no  other  thought  than  obedience  to  the  church.^^^  But 
he  would  have  been  less  than  human  if  he  had  not  felt  bitterly 
the  intrigues  against  him.  Yet  some  hope  he  must  have  re- 
tained almost  to  the  end,  since  he  was  insistent  that  funds  should 
be  obtained  for  the  continuance  of  the  Avenir.^^'^  How  should 
he  not  who  had  boasted  so  long  of  the  splendour  of  Rome,  and 

="»  Blaize,  op.  cit.,  II,  115,  122. 

32«  Dudon,  op.  cit.,  163. 

'21  Nielsen,  op.  cit.,  II,  60  f. 

«2  Dudon,  op.  cit.,  168  f. 

'23  Ibid.,  177. 

3"  "Corrcsp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  235. 

325  Ibid.,  II,  236. 

"0  Ibid.,  II,  238. 

3"  "Lettres  k  Montalembert,"  p.  9. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        247 

could  not  but  feel  certain  of  the  Tightness  of  his  cause?  He  was, 
indeed,  saddened  by  the  self-effacement  of  the  papacy,  its 
general  deafness  to  popular  desire,  the  ambition  of  the  cardinals, 
and  their  absorption  in  secular  interests.  It  was,  to  him,  humil- 
iating to  find  Rome  completely  dependent  upon  the  good  will  of 
the  European  concert,  painfully  without  answer  for  the  new  prob- 
lems that  confronted  men.  He  could  not  avoid  the  thought  that 
its  preoccupation  with  politics  was  the  root  cause  of  its  blindness 
to  a  new  world.  Nor  did  its  internal  condition  make  for  bet- 
terment. The  secular  ecclesiastics  were  too  ignorant,  the  very 
means  of  instruction  were  uselessly  difficult  of  access,  Rome 
was  suffering  from  intellectual  deterioration,  and  her  attempt  at 
the  control  of  new  opinion  resulted  in  oppression.^^s  jjg  drew  a 
striking  picture  of  the  suspicion  with  which  the  papacy  was 
everywhere  regarded. ^^^  He  insisted  again  that  only  in  the 
assertion  of  her  permanent  alliance  with  the  forces  of  freedom 
could  she  restore  her  ascendency  over  the  world,  But  he  was 
asking  too  much  of  an  institution  so  securely  wedded  to  her 
past  traditions,  and  he  realised  that  it  was  useless  to  linger. 
He  left  Italy,  and,  with  Montalembert,  who  joined  him  at  Flor- 
ence, he  set  out  for  Munich.  There  he  met  Gorres  and  Dollinger, 
and  found  in  their  ideas  a  fine  kinship  with  his  own.^^"  It  was 
that  same  Dollinger  who,  a  quarter  of  a  century  later,  was  to 
bring  the  whole  weight  of  his  incomparable  learning  and  magni- 
ficent honesty  to  the  service  of  ecclesiastical  liberalism.  There 
is  a  dramatic  fitness  in  his  presence  at  Lamennais'  side  when 
the  news  of  the  latter's  condemnation  was  published  to  the  world. 

IX.  THE  CONDEMNATION 

The  encyclical  Mirari  Vos,^^^  is  the  first  step  on  the  road  which 
led,  first  through  the  Syllabus  of  1864  and  the  definition  of  papal 
infallability,^^^  and  later  through  the  condemnation  of  modernism 
in  the  Pascendi,  to  the  proclamation  of  war  on  the  basis  of  mod- 

328  "Oeuvres,"  II,  573  f. 

329  Ibid.,  II,  378. 

330  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  325. 

331  See  the  text  of  the  encyclical  in  Lamennais,  "Oeuvres,"  II,  603  ff, 
or  Dudon,  op.  cit.,  389-400. 

332 1  have  tried  to  point  out  the  significance  of  these  in  my  "Problem  of 
Sovereignty,"  pp.  176  f. 


248        AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

em  society  by  Rome.  To  Lamennais'  plea  that  the  cause  of  the 
church  and  the  cause  of  society  are  one,  it  virtually  replied  that 
while  that  was  undoubtedly  true,  the  church  would  only  permit 
the  triumph  of  the  social  cause  upon  its  own  terms.  But  those 
terms  were  themselves  the  hard-won  creed  of  a  democratic  time; 
and  by  their  rejection  the  papacy  declared  its  determination  to 
stand  aside  from  modern  progress  as  we  generally  conceive  it. "» 
No  one  will  deny  the  greatness  of  that  defiance.  What,  in  fact, 
it  has  involved,  is  a  claim  to  a  complete  lordship  over  the  minds 
of  men.  Pius  X  only  completed,  on  the  dogmatic  side,  what 
Gregory  XVI  outlined  on  the  political.  In  that  aspect  the  work 
of  de  Maistre,  and  of  Lamennais  before  1830,  has  borne  its  due 
fruit.  The  papacy  has  given  birth  to  a  political  and  intellectual 
system  of  which  the  broad  outlines  are  perfectly  clear.  The 
Roman  Catholic  church  has  become  a  centralized  and,  for  its 
members,  an  infallible  despotism.  It  has  insisted  that  the  life  of 
the  world  must  be  written  in  religious  terms ;  which  is  virtually  to 
pronounce  that  the  pope  is  its  sovereign  since  to  him  has  been 
confined  the  control  of  religious  destinies.  Gregory  XVI,  at  the 
very  outset  of  his  encyclical,  repudiated  as  noxious  the  notion 
that  the  church  was  in  need  of  regeneration.^^*  He  Ughtly  casti- 
gated those  who  attacked  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy  and  the 
indissolubility  of  marriage.^^^  But  the  great  evil  of  the  time  was 
indifferentism,  and  from  that  every  species  of  intellectual  de- 
lirium is  born.^^^  Liberty  of  conscience  is  impossible;  in  result 
it  is  an  invitation  to  erroneous  opinion.  It  leads  to  a  contempt 
for  sacred  things  and  for  laws  that  demand  respect.  It  is  the 
root  of  all  social  evil.  Nothing  has  so  much  contributed  to  the 
decay  of  great  empires  than  such  immoderate  freedom  of  opin- 
ion.^" It  of  course  follows  that  the  liberty  of  the  press  is  like- 
wise condemned;  it  is  no  more  than  the  instrument  which 
secures  the  expansion  of  monstrous  errors.^^^    He  insists  on  the 

"'  It  is  interesting  to  compare  Tyrrell's  judgment  on  this  episode  at  the 
time  when  his  orthodoxy  was  unquestioned.  See  his,"  Faith  of  the  Millions," 
Vol.  II,  p.  86  f. 

"*  Lamennais  "Oeuvres,"  II,  604. 

»» Ibdd.,  II,  608. 

»« Ibid.,  II,  609. 

»'  Ibid.,  II,  610. 

***Hnd. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        249 

necessity  of  submission  to  princes.  To  deny  their  right  to  au- 
thority is  to  deny  the  divinity  of  power.  Nor  must  men  preach 
the  desirability  of  separating  church  from  state.  That  union 
results  in  benefit  to  both  and  only  the  partisans  of  a  boundless 
license  can  deny  its  virtue.''^  He  attacks  the  association  of 
catholics  with  men  of  other  rehgions;  it  results  only^n  the 
demand  for  impossible  liberties  and  the  destruction  of  worthy 
authority.'^"  Such  doctrines  he  condemns  as  the  reasoning"  of 
an  insolent  pride,  the  confidence  of  men  in  a»reason  that  by  its 
nature  is  weak  and  broken.  Perhaps  the  most  significant  clause 
in  the  encyclical  is  its  ending.  That  which  Lamennais  had  de- 
manded was,  above  all,  the  freedom  of  the  church  from  secular 
interference,  its  independence  from  all  external  institutions  by 
the  very  fact  that  it  was  a  church.  Of  all  this  Gregory  makes 
not  merely  abstraction  but  denial.  It  is  upon  the  princes,  whom 
he  calls  his  children,  that  he  lays  the  task  of  executing  his  theo- 
ries. They  have  their  authority  not  less  for  the  protection  of 
the  church.    It  is  in  them  that  he  puts  his  trust.^^^ 

Not  even  Metternich  could  have -desired  a  more  complete 
condemnation.  The  direction  which  Lamennais  had  endeav- 
oured to  give  to  the  forces  of  Catholicism  was  repulsed  to  the 
minutest  detail.  He  was  offered  a  clear  alternative.  Either  he 
must  continue  his  work  outside  the  church  or  he  must  submit 
to  a  Catholicism  in  which  he  had  ceased  to  find  spiritual  consola- 
tion. He  could  not  take  refuge  in  the  propagation  of  his  politi- 
car ideas;  for  the  religious  impUcations  of  Catholicism  were  so 
defined  in  the  encycHcal  as  clearly  to  include  the  whole  field  of 
political  inquiry.  That  doctrine  of  the  two  kingdoms  which, 
in  reality,  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  philosophy  of  the  Avenir 
could  draw  no  sustenance  from  the  papal  pronouncement.  He 
did  not  conceal  its  significance  from  himself.  ''Les  princes  et  le 
pape,"  he  wrote, ^^^  "ont  crut  qu'en  s'unissant,  lis  arreteraient 
le  mouvement  des  peuples  et  les  maintiendraient  sous  le  joug. 
Gr^goire  XVI,  comme  vous  avez  vu,  vient  de  proclamer  cette 
grande  alliance,  et  de  condamner  par  la  les  cathoUques  a  rin- 
ses Ibid.,  II,  612. 
3"  Ibid.,  II,  613. 
3«  Ibid.,  II,  613-4. 
3«  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  245. 


250        AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

action.  lis  ne  peuvent  pas  defendre  I'Eglise  contre  la  volonte 
de  son  chef;  nous  nous  tairons  done."  The  Avenir  and  the 
Agence  Generale  were  suppressed  with  perfect  submission  to  the 
papal  authority;^"  and  the  pope  had  written  in  approving 
acceptance.^'*^  Not,  indeed,  that  he  had  surrendered  any  of  his 
opinions.  He  had  simply  agreed  to  silence  because  one  who 
had  the  right  to  command  him  had  so  ordered.  He  was  not  less 
fearful  for  the  future  of  Catholicism  than  before;  the  tempest 
he  had  descried  would  yet  shake  Christianity  to  its  founda- 
tions.^''^   Meanwhile  he  asked  only  for  peace. 

But  it  was  exactly  peace  that  his  opponents  were  not  willing 
he  should  enjoy.  Vague  whispers  began  to  be  bruited  abroad 
which  were  calculated  to  do  him  harm  at  Rome.  It  was  suggested 
that  his  submission  had  been  merely  formal  and  that  he  did  not 
mean  it.  Men  pointed  out  that  he  had  made  no  formal  abjura- 
tion of  his  principles.  It  was  the  hounding  of  the  wounded  lion 
to  his  lair.  He  was  reduced  to  the  utmost  poverty  ;^^^  the  pope 
had  condemned  him;  the  bishops  still  treated  him  as  their 
enemy.  He  had,  of  course,  a  gigantic  problem  before  him.  If 
an  infallible  pope  condemned  a  liberalism  he  believed  to  be  es- 
sential what  must  be  his  attitude?^''^  It  was  simple  enough  for 
him  to  say  that  infallibility  came  only  when  the  papal  voice  was 
that  of  the  whole  church,^^^  but  who  was  to  judge  the  occasion? 
He  seemed  himself  uncertain.  "Laissons  aller,"  he  wrote  to 
Montalembert,^^^  "  le  pape  et  les  eveques  ....  iln'yariena 
faire  par  le  clerge,  ni  avec  le  clerge,"  and  there  are  surely  few 
who  cannot  pardon  that  weariness  of  spirit. 

The  event  which  seems  to  have  precipitated  the  catastrophe 
was  the  publication  by  Montalembert,  early  in  1833,  of  his 
translation  of  Mickiewicz's  hymn  to  Polish  liberty  in  which 
he  passionately  defended  the  late  insurrection.  Since  Rome 
had  approved  its  suppression,  the  enemies  of  Lamennais  did 
not  hesitate  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  they  were  contemptu- 

3«  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  340. 

»« Ibid.,  II,  346. 

^^  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  250. 

346  "Corresp."  (cd.  Forgues),  II,  264. 

'"  Cf.  the  letter  to  Count  Kzcwuski.    "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  270. 

a"  Ibid.,  II,  272. 

349  "Lettres  k  Montalembert,"  p.  43. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        251 

ous  of  papal  authority.^^''  Accusations  were  scattered  broad- 
cast that  he  was  guilty  of  insincerity;  and  Gregory  himself 
made  protestations  to  the  Archbishops  of  Toulouse. "^^  All  his 
friends  begged  him  to  be  silent  and  to  submit  once  more.  He 
was  willing  enough  where  religion  alone  was  concerned.  But 
outside  the  church  he  demanded  an  absolute  freedom.  "In 
purely  temporal  affairs,"  he  declared,^^^  "particularly  where 
France  is  concerned,  I  recognise  no  authority  with  the  right 
either  to  impose  opinions  upon  me  or  to  dictate  my  conduct. 
I  say  boldly  that  in  this  sphere — which  is  unconnected  with 
the  spiritual  power — I  will  never  abdicate  the  independence 
that  comes  to  me  in  virtue  of  my  humanity,  and  that  alike  in 
thought  and  action  I  will  take  counsel  only  of  my  conscience 
and  my  reason." 

It  was  undoubtedly  a  defiance  of  Roman  sovereignty,  an 
assertion  of  the  supremacy  of  that  last  inwardness  of  the 
human  mind  wliich  resists  all  authority  save  its  own  convic- 
tion of  rectitude.  He  wrote  to  Rome  that  so  far  as  the  church 
was  concerned  no  speech  or  writing  of  his  would  discuss  it; 
and  he  asseverated  his  acceptance  of  papal  control  in  faith  and 
morals.^^'  He  insisted  that  all  he  had  promised  in  the  Munich 
declaration  had  been  fulfilled  and  more  than  fulfilled. ^^^  He 
resigned  the  headship  of  the  Congregation  of  St.  Peter  and  the 
little  society  of  La  Chesnaie  was  dissolved.  But  the  pope  was 
not  satisfied.  He  insisted  that  a  new  submission  was  essential 
when  the  affront  of  Montalembert  was  borne  in  mind.^^^  The 
letter  was  written  privately  to  the  Bishop  of  Rennes  who 
promptly  published  it  with  some  comments  which  were  simply 
calumnies.^^^  Lamennais  replied  by  another  appeal  to  the 
pope  in  which  he  emphasised  his  submission  in  all  that  religion 
demands  as  well  as  his  eagerness  to  please  him  so  far  as  his 
conscience  would  allow;  but  he  insisted  on  his  right  to  freedom 

SB"  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  366. 

3"  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  306-7.     Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  368. 

352  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  307. 

363  Ibid.,  II,  309. 

354  Ibid.,  II,  312-4.    The  letter  is  clearly  written  to  a  Roman  Cardinal. 

355  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  378. 

356  Ibid.,  II,  379. 


252        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

in  purely  temporal  affairs.^"  "I  have  defended  the  rights  of 
God  and  of  the  church,"  he  wrote  to  a  friend,^^^  "I  will  not  in- 
sult God  by  deserting  those  of  humanity;"  and  he  insisted 
that  to  proclaim  the  twofold  sovereignty  of  Rome  would  be 
to  surrender  men  to  an  insupportable  tyranny.  Nor  could  the 
urgency  of  his  most  intimate  associates  move  him  from  that 
position.  "My  conscience  will  not  allow  me,"  he  told  Monta- 
lembert,'^^  "to  abandon  the  traditional  doctrine  of  two  socie- 
ties, each  distinct  in  its  own  sphere,  and  I  will  make  no  declara- 
tion which  suggests  even  my  imphcit  abandonment  of  it."  To 
Rome  such  a  limitation  seemed  entirely  unsatisfactory.^®'' 
Lamennais  has  told  us  himself  that  at  this  juncture  he  began 
to  feel  uncertain  as  to  the  very  basis  of  Catholic  authority. 
He  wished  only  for  peace  and  he  would  sign  any  declaration 
they  chose  to  exact  from  him.^®^     A  plenary  submission  was 

exacted  and  Rome  congratulated  itself  on  a  magnificent 
victory.^^2 

But  Lamennais'  own  mind  was  still  tortured  by  doubt.  He 
was  distressed  at  the  abuse  Rome  would  make  of  such  power 
as  she  claimed  when  she  came  to  exert  it  over  temporal  inter- 
ests.^®' He  had  signed  the  declaration  because  he  desired, 
above  all,  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  rebel  and  a  schismatic.  He 
saw  in  the  situation  simply  the  necessity  of  peace,  and  to  that 
end  he  would,  as  he  bitterly  said,'®^  have  been  willing  to  identify 
the  Pope  with  God.  What  the  event  had  impressed  upon  him 
was  the  urgent  necessity  of  distinguishing  between  the  divine 
and  human  elements  in  the  church  that  the  confusion  of  their 
demands  might  be  avoided.  For  himself  he  was  determined 
to  avoid  for  the  future  all  contact  with  ecclesiastical  affairs.'®^ 
He  was  beginning  to  make  plainer  to  himself  that  distinction 

3"  "Ocuvres,"  II,  555. 
'=•8  Laveille,  op.  cit.,  p.  303. 

'''  See  the  fundamental  statement  of  his  position  in  the  letter  to  Montu- 
lembert  of  Nov.  25.,  33.    "Lettres  h  M.,"  p.  219  f . 
3««  "Oeuvres,"  II,  558-9. 
30'  Ibid.,  II,  561. 
3«  Dudon,  op.  cit.,  292  f. 
»63  "Lettres  a  Montalcmbcrt,"  p.  229. 
3M/6icZ.,  p.  231. 
'«*  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  351,  353. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        253 

between  Catholicism  and  Christianity  which  had  for  some 
time  impressed  him.^^^  He  angrily  repulsed  some  curious  at- 
tempts to  attract  him  to  Rome.^"  But  even  in  this  difficult 
position  his  antagonists  did  not  cease  to  annoy  him.  The 
Archbishop  of  Paris  was  insistent  that  he  should  thank  the 
Pope  for  the  acceptance  of  his  submission.  A  priest  of  Saint- 
Sulpice  published  an  acrimonious  attack  against  him  to  which, 
by  the  nature  of  his  agreement,  he  could  make  no  reply. ^^^  His 
health  was  broken,  and  so  generous  a  soul  as  Maurice  de 
Gu^rin  was  moved  to  indignation  by  his  sufferings.^^^  He 
needed  something  that  would  restore  his  self-confidence  and 
make  him  feel  that  he  had  not  deserted  his  ideals.  After  all, 
he  was  certain  of  their  truth;  and  peace  at  the  price  at  which 
he  bought  it  was  not  worth  the  purchase.^^"  He  was  deeply 
moved  by  the  cruelty  with  which  the  Lyons  insurrection  was 
suppressed  ;^^^  and  that  seems  to  have  been  the  last  pain  he 
could  bear.  He  was  not  a  man  to  whom  silence  came  easily 
and  where  he  felt  profoundly  his  thought  took  expression  in 
his  pen.  By  the  end  of  April,  1834,  the  "  Paroles  d'un  Croyant" 
was  ready  for  the  press.  He  seems  to  have  had  no  illusions  as 
to  the  bitterness  it  would  arouse;  but  the  time  had  come  when 
he  could  contain  himself  no  longer.  "I  have  seen,"  he  wrote,"^ 
"the  tears  which  becloud  the  eyes  of  the  people;  I  hear  their 
cries  of  pain,  and  my  heart  yearns  to  comfort  them."  He  did 
not  doubt  that  he  would  be  attacked.  Men  would  tell  him 
that  he  ought  to  have  kept  silence.  The  simple  answer  was 
that  he  could  not.  "How  could  I  be  silent,"  he  asked,^"  "sur- 
rounded, as  we  are,  by  such  iniquity,  such  tyranny,  such  pain, 
such  want?  I  have  felt  that  deeply;  I  have  said  my  say. 
Could  I  consent  to  allow  future  generations  to  lay  to  my 

366  "Lettres  a  Montalembert,"  p.  124. 
3G7  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  351. 
368  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  II,  403. 
363  "Lettres,"  Jan.  10,  Feb.  1,  May  10,  '34. 

3'"  This  feeling  comes  out  very  clearly  in  his  letter  of  March  29,  '34,  to 
the  Archbishops  of  Paris,  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues),  II,  3G0. 
3-1  Ibid.,  II,  362-4. 
3'2  Ibid.,  II,  3G7. 
3"  Ibid.,  II,  369. 


254        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

memory's  account  one  of  those  iniquitous  silences  which  harm 
not  less,  and  often  more,  than  direct  connivance  at  wrong?" 
He  felt  this  the  more  keenly  since  his  thought  had  now  reached 
a  point  where  he  looked  for  salvation  in  purely  political  propa- 
ganda. He  reported  to  Montalembert — still  faithful  to  him 
when  Lacordaire  had  already  deserted  his  ideals — a  rumour 
that  the  Russian  ambassador  had  accused  him  of  desiring  to 
make  Catholicism  a  power  once  more,  an  effort  which  Russia 
would  never  permit.  "I  am  glad,"  he  said,^^^  "that  he  will  not 
permit  it.    That  way  we  shall  find  no  solution." 

Only  those  who  read  day  by  day  the  letters  to  his  closest 
friends  can  realise  what  the  decision  must  have  cost  him.  He 
did  not  hide  from  himself  that  he  was  burning  the  bridges 
behind  him.  To  write  a  hymn  to  the  splendour  of  democracy 
was  indeed,  after  all  that  had  passed,  to  hurl  defiance  at  Rome. 
It  is  useless  to  blame  him.  It  is  too  fatally  easy  to  ascribe  his 
determination  to  pride,  to  self-confidence,  to  an  overweening 
sense  of  his  own  rightncss  for  such  analysis  to  be  satisfactory. 
The  issue  is  far  more  complex.  Rome  had  extorted  from  him 
the  admission  of  dogmas  to  which,  in  his  heart,  he  could  give  no 
assent.  If,  hke  Tyrrell,  Uke  DolHnger,  he  strove  hard  to  stand 
by  the  ancient  ways,  to  make  himself  one  with  what  he  believed 
to  be  the  real  splendour  of  a  Catholicism  that  enshrouded  itself 
in  an  appearance  of  evil,  there  came  at  last  the  realisation  that, 
in  any  final  exainination,  he  must  take  for  truth  and  right  conduct 
that  which  his  conscience  told  him  he  might  identify  with  truth 
and  right  conduct.     Rome,  he  admitted  freely,  had  the  power 

Ho  demand  obedience  from  him;  but  the  power  to  exact  it  she 
did  not  possess.    It  was  the  simple  fact  that  in  the  last  resort 

,  only  his  own  conscience  could  be  sovereign  that  he  asserted. 

!  Wrong  remained  to  him  wrong  however  much  his  masters 

'  might  proclaim  its  rectitude.  He  counted  the  cost  of  measur- 
ing his  forces  against  the  greatest  of  ecclesiastical  institutions. 
It  might  bend  him;  certainly  if  he  remained  subject  to  its 
strength  it  would  absorb  his  forces  as  the  rivers  are  absorbed 
in  the  endless  sea.  But  he  was  too  confident  of  his  own  soul 
thus  to  mangle  it.  What  Rome  called  a  submissive  sacrifice 
he  branded  as  an  unrighteous  desertion.    What  she  called  the 

"<  "Lettres  a  Montalembert,"  p.  254. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        255 

victory  of  her  collective  wisdom  he  denounced  as  the  blind- 
ness of  her  past.  So  he  took  the  privilege  of  every  human 
being  to  think  out  for  himself  the  conditions  of  his  intellectual 
striving. 

X.  THE  RED  CAP  ON  THE  CROSS 

Where  even  the  magic  of  Sainte-Beuve  has  failed  to  give 
adequately  the  significance  of  the  "Paroles  d'un  Croyant," 
none  else  may  attempt  its  analysis.  It  is  a  lyrical  version  of 
the  "Communist  Manifesto."  It  denies  the  legitimacy  of  all 
authority  that  is  not  based  upon  the  widest  liberty  and  heralds 
in  its  destruction  the  onset  of  a  brighter  dawn.  It  is  written 
in  a  style  that  has  a  splendour  and  elevation  not  merely  unique 
in  Lamennais'  own  work,  but  in  the  whole  range  of  French 
literature.  It  is  instinct  with  a  passionate  generosity,  and  its 
flaming  mysticism  has  in  it  much  of  the  exquisite  character  of 
a  Kempis.  Sainte-Beuve  has  told  us  how  the  workmen  respon- 
sible for  its  composition  could  hardly  continue  for  their  ex- 
citement.^^^  New  editions  could  hardly  keep  pace  with  the 
demand.  Lamennais  himself  has  written  how  workingmen 
contributed  from  their  savings  to  buy  a  copy  that  they  might 
read  together  at  night;  and  how  it  was  read  aloud  in  the 
workshops."''  Students  declaimed  its  finest  passages  in  the 
Gardens  of  the  Luxembourg;  and  even  the  members  of  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  forgot  the  pressure  of  public  business 
in  their  anxiety  to  feel  the  throb  of  its  eloquence.^'^ 

But  no  one  can  attack  the  foundations  of  an  existing  order 
without  waking  the  slumbering  vigilance  of  property. ^'^  "It 
is  the  apocalypse  of  Satan,"  wrote  his  friend,  the  Baron  de 
Vitrolles."^  "It  is  the  red  cap  of  liberty  upon  a  cross."  The 
Duchesse  de  Dino  was  amazed  at  his  Jacobinism.^^'^  A  dis- 
tinguished journalist  denounced  him  as  the  herald  of  insurrec- 

"5  "Nouveaux  Lundis,"  Vol.  I,  p.  39  f. 
»^6  "Lettres  a  Montalembert,"  316. 
2"  Ibid.,  270. 

^'8  Mr.  Gladstone  has  an  interesting  reflection  on  this  attitude.  Morley, 
"Life,"  III.  352. 

«"  "Vitrolles,"  p.  248. 

880  "Souvenirs  de  Barante,"  Vol.  V,  p.  137. 


256         AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN   STATE 

tion.^^^  Guizot  has  left  us  a  curious  and  involved  expression 
of  horror  at  Lamennais'  tergiversations.^^^  j)e  Rigny,  the 
minister  of  foreign  affairs,  wrote  to  Rome  at  the  universal 
astonishment  that  such  ideas  should  emanate  from  a  priest. ^^^ 
The  Gazette  d' Augsburg  declared  that  if  the  devil  visited  the 
world,  he  would  come  with  the  " Paroles"  in  his  hand.^^'*  There 
was  no  question  of  defence,  nor  did  Lamennais  desire  it.  He 
had  written,  as  he  said,  to  salve  his  conscience  and  to  cleanse 
his  soul  from  its  association  with  an  insupportable  tyranny.'^^ 
Refutations  poured  in  on  every  side.  The  book  was  speedily 
prohibited  at  Rome,  though  Lamennais  at  first  thought  it 
doubtful  whether  the  pope  would  pronounce  officially  against 
it.^^  Lacordaire,  with  a  cruelly  indecent  haste,  had  signalised 
it  as  the  end  of  the  Menasien  school,^^^  and  his  OAvn  brother 
did  not  dare  to  read  it.^^  If  there  were  favourable  voices  they 
were  nowhere  those  of  authority.  It  is  clear  enough  that  tliis 
adverse  opinion  failed  to  move  Lamennais  from  the  certainty 
that  he  had  done  right.  Once  he  was  certain  of  that,  he  cared 
little  for  their  praise  or  blame.^^* 

Rome,  as  always,  moved  slowly.  The  reports  that  came  to 
Lamennais  seemed,  on  the  whole,  to  suggest  that  she  would 
keep  silent.^^"  But  it  was,  in  reahty,  impossible  for  the  papacy 
not  to  pronounce  its  judgment.  The  encychcal  "Mirari  Vos" 
was  hardly  two  years  old;  and  its  plea  for  political  obedience 
was  implicitly  set  at  naught  by  Lamennais'  work.  The  French 
government  itself  was  in  a  quandary.  Had  it  prosecuted  La- 
mennais for  sedition  it  was  more  than  doubtful  if  a  jury  could 
have  been  persuaded  to  convict  him,  and  it  dare  not  risk  the 
chance  of  failure.  Metternich,  indeed,  did  what  the  French 
ministry  did  not  feel  able  to  do,  and  sent  a  passionate  denun- 

381 S.  M.  Girardin,  "Souveniers,"  p.  270. 

382  Cf.  his  "Memoirs"  (Eng.  trans.),  Vol.  Ill,  Ch.  Ill,  passim. 

383  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  Ill,  39. 

384  Ibid.,  Ill,  43. 

38«  "Corresp."  (ed.  Forgues).  I.  115 

386  Ibid.,  II,  380. 

387  "Considerations  sur  le  syst^nic  philosophique  de  M.  dn  La  Mennais." 

388  Boutard,  III,  51. 

389  "Lettres  k  Montalembert,"  p.  260. 
39«  Ibid.,  2S7.,  Lavalle,  op.  cit.,  324. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        257 

elation  of  the  book  to  Rome,  and  Russia  also  made  its  protest.^^^ 
It  is  doubtful  enough  if  Gregory  needed  such  persuasion.  His 
secretary  of  state,  Bernetti,  looked  already  upon  Lamennais 
as  a  Catholic  Luther.^^^  'pj^g  Pope  himself  spoke  freely  of  the 
pain  the  book  had  caused  him;  and  in  the  encyclical  "Singulari 
nos"  of  June  25,  1834  the  condemnation  was  published.  It 
rightly  recalls  that  Lamennais  had  agreed  to  obey  the  teach- 
ings of  the  "Mirari  vos"  and  that  the  "  Paroles  "  was  a  defiance 
of  its  letter  and  its  spirit.  It  excited  disobedience  to  kings, 
contempt  for  law  and  order,  destruction  as  well  of  religious  as 
of  political  power.  Its  attitude  to  authority  was  denounced 
as  an  outrage  to  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  hierarchy — a  mere 
cloak  for  the  attainment  of  freedom  of  conscience  and  the 
press.  It  attacked  Lamennais'  call  to  the  peoples  of  the  world 
to  unite,  its  justification  of  tyrannicide,  the  astute  temerity 
with  which  it  had  cited  scripture  to  its  purpose.  "Its  proposi- 
tions," said  the  Encyclical,^^^  "are  false,  calumnies,  rash,  con- 
ducive to  anarchy,  contrary  to  the  word  of  God,  impious, 
scandalous,  erroneous  and  already  condemned  by  the  church 
in  such  heresies  as  those  of  the  Waldenses,  the  Wyclifites  and 
the  followers  of  Hus."  It  was,  in  fact,  a  doctrine  totally  out 
of  accord  with  the  political  direction  that  Gregory  had  finally 
chosen. ^^^  The  historical  relation  of  Lamennais'  teaching  is,  after 
all,  mere  verbiage;  his  democracy  had  as  much  connexion 
with  the  doubtful  communism  of  Wyclif  as  with  the  antagonistic 
safeguard  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment;  though  Lamennais, 
like  the  great  English  heretic,  did  sever  the  action  of  the  church 
from  that  of  the  world  by  reason  of  his  deep  sense  of  its  un- 
earthly dignity .^^^  If  it  is  a  sin  to  love  the  church  so  greatly 
as  to  be  fearful  of  its  degradation,  assuredly  no  one  will  question 
the  rightness  of  the  papal  condemnation. 

If  Lamennais  was  surprised,  the  blow  seems  to  have  hurt 
him  less  for  himself  than  for  his  friends.^^^    He  did,  indeed,  feel 

3^1  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  Ill,  76-8. 

392  Ibid.,  82. 

393  See  the  integral  text  in  Dudon,  Op.  cit.  427  f. 
39"  Cf.  Nielsen,  Op.  cit.  11,  64  f. 

395  Cf .  Mr.  Poole's  comments,  "Illustrations  of  the  History  of  Medieval 
Thought,"  p.  302  f. 

396  "Lettres  h  Montalembert,"  p.  306. 


258        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

deeply  indignant  that  a  power  he  had  served  so  well  and  so 
deeply  loved  should  speak  of  him  as  the  basest  of  men.  He 
hated  the  low  intrigues  which  had  led  to  his  fall.  He  objected 
to  the  condemnation  of  a  book  in  terms  so  vague  as  never  to 
specify  wherein  its  error  consisted.  He  did  not  for  a  moment 
believe  that  the  blow  could  at  all  arrest  the  onrush  of  forces 
which  were  working  towards  the  destruction  of  an  intolerable 
regime.^"  He  was,  indeed,  unfortunate  in  his  attempt  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  voice  of  Gregory  the  pope,  and  that  of 
Gregory  the  man;  Rome  has  given  us  no  criterion  for  making 
such  delicate  distinctions.'^^  His  complaint  that  Lamartine 
and  Chateaubriand  spoke  as  he  did  and  yet  escaped  condemna- 
tion misses  the  point  that  they  were  not,  after  all,  priests,  and 
the  measure  of  authority  that  could  be  exacted  from  them 
was  therefore  different.  It  was  useless  to  hope  that  peace 
could  be  made.  The  fact  was  that  so  long  as  Lamennais  made 
his  conscience  the  supreme  arbiter  of  his  faith  there  was  no 
place  for  him  in  the  church  unless  his  doctrine  coincided  with 
that  of  Rome.  He  saw  in  the  fight  the  same  old  struggle  of 
medieval  time;'^^  and  not  even  the  most  earnest  solicitations 
of  Montalembert  could  induce  him  to  withdraw  from  his  posi- 
tion. At  the  end  of  1834  even  Montalembert  deserted  him  so 
that  the  last  of  his  disciples  was  gone.^''^  He  was  now  alone 
and  there  remained  only  the  task  of  completing  the  defence  of 
his  ideas.  The  "Affaires  de  Rome,"  which  he  published  to- 
wards the  end  of  1836,  was  the  narrative  of  his  difficulties  with 
the  Papacy.  It  is  a  magnificent  piece  of  dii^passionate  analysis, 
unanswerable  as  it  has  gone  practically  unchallenged.  Only 
at  the  end  does  he  permit  himself  reflections  and  it  is  then  only 
to  prophesy  that  since  the  victory  of  democratic  principles  is 
certain,  Rome  must  embrace  liberalism  or  perish.  But  Rome 
had  chosen  another  path  and  the  break  between  them  was 
final.  Henceforth  he  devoted  himself  entirely  to  the  cause  of 
the  people.  There  is  a  certain  dramatic  irony  in  the  thought 
thj;t,  almost  simultaneously,  Newman  had  entered  upon  that 

»"  "Corresp.,"  II,  386. 

'"8  "Lettres  a  Montalembert,"  p.  o()7. 

»»« Ibid.,  324. 

'"o  Boutard,  op.  cit.,  Ill,  103. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        259 

struggle  against  dogmatic  liberalism  which  ended  in  his  adop- 
tion of  the  CathoUc  faith.^^^ 

XI.  IMPLICATIONS 

It  is  an  astounding  evolution.  Yet  it  is  an  evolution  condi- 
tioned at  every  stage  by  the  logic  of  a  bitter  experience.  La- 
mennais  started  out  with  a  firm  belief  in  royalism  and  the 
church.  He  was  the  envenomed  antagonist  of  the  Revolution, 
and  few  have  drawn  up,  from  his  standpoint,  an  abler  indict- 
ment of  its  tendencies.  He  distrusted  the  people  and  he  found 
no  comfort  in  the  dogmas  of  individualism.  He  came,  in  the 
end,  to  see  that  all  for  which  he  had  previously  contended  was 
a  tissue  of  error.  Nor  is  clarity  wanting  to  the  basis  of  his 
cHajD^  He.saw  the  church  used  as  no  more  than  a  political 
instrument,  and,  like  Chalmers  and  Newman,  he  made  insist- 
ence upon  its  corporate  independence.  It  was  here  that  he 
found  the  means  of  a  sympathetic  acquaintance  with  hberal 
doctrine.  But  he  soon  found  that  ecclesiastical  liberalism  is 
only  part  of  a  larger  whole.  He  discovered  that,  when  the 
government  of  men  is  despotic,  religion  is  too  valuable  an  in- 
strument in  the  security  of  servitude  to  be  left  untrammelled. 
So  he  was  led  to  the  examination  of  the  political  basis  of  des- 
potic government  and  thence  to  its  rejection.  He  came  to 
understand  that  a  free  state  was  the  condition  of  a  free  church, 
that  he  had,  in  fact,  allies  exactly  in  that  party  for  which  he 
had  earlier  professed  the  deepest  hostility.  He  urged  upon  the 
church  an  adventure  in  liberalism.  Let  it  once  make  the  people 
free  and  its  own  triumph  must  inevitably  follow.  If  Rome 
would  abandon  the  pursuit  of  earthly  power  and  devote  herself 
to  the  liberation  of  those  who  loved  her  most  deeply,  she  could 
save  herself  from  the  contamination  that  came  from  alliance 
with  the  apostles  of  political  tyranny. 

He  did  not,  at  the  outset,  doubt  that  such  an  appeal  must 
win  response.  But  he  had  totally  mistaken  the  character  of 
the  church.  He  had  himself  been  the  protagonist  in  the  defi- 
nition of  her  Austinianism  without,  as  it  seems,  understanding 
the  real  significance  inherent  in  §uch  power.     For  Rome  could 

^01  "Apologia"  (ed.  Ward),  p.  150;  and  cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty," 
Chapter  III. 


260        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

not  embrace  the  cause  of  the  people  and  remain  blind  to  her 
own  condition.  The  men  who  directed  her  government  were 
too  deeply  fond  of  power  ever  to  submit  to  its  partition.  To 
make  alliance  with  liberalism  w^ould  be  to  condemn  the  church's 
past,  to  lessen  the  empire  to  which  her  greatest  governors  had 
for  eight  centuries  laid  claim.  Herself  rigidly  authoritarian 
in  temper,  her  natural  affinity  was  with  those  powers  which 
were  struggling  against  the  tidal  wave  of  democratic  advance. 
What,  in  truth,  Lamennais  asked  was  that  she  should  be  un- 
true to  her  special  ethos.  Of  dogma,  indeed,  he  might  make 
entire  abstraction;  but  to  ask  the  church  to  concern  herself 
with  the  discoveries  of  modern  civilisation  was  to  demand  her 
admission  that  there  was  a  truth  of  w'hich  she  was  not  the 
appointed  guardian  from  the  da^^^l  of  her  history.  She  would 
not  suffer  such  diminution  of  her  sovereignty.  If  the  choice 
was  between  a  claim  to  the  widest  powers  and  an  alliance  wdth 
the  unknown  future,  she  would  take  her  stand  by  that  past 
which  had  given  her  those  powers.  Her  situation  was  consistent. 
Lamennais  would  have  made  a  newer  and  a  different  Rome. 
He  would  have  turned  a  state  into  a  church.  For  Rome  is  the 
one  fundamental  institution  of  medieval  times  which  has  re- 
tained the  indicia  of  her  universal  dominion.  Today,  perhaps, 
they  are  no  more  than  a  magnificent  gesture,  but  they  bear 
witness  to  the  tenacity  of  her  memory. 

Her  expulsion  of  Lamennais  was  the  registration  of  her  sover- 
eign power.  Yet,  by  that  very  exercise,  she  demonstrated  her 
impotence.  Even  the  mightiest  prince,  as  Hume  pointed  out 
in  a  famous  essay,  is  dependent  upon  his  ability  to  lead  men 
by  their  opinion.  It  was  herein  that  Rome  failed.  For  while 
she  possessed  the  external  sanction,  she  could  not  exact  passive 
obedience.  She  might  command,  but  she  lacked  any  security 
that  she  would  be  obeyed.  She  demonstrated  once  more  not, 
perhaps,  so  much  for  herself  as  for  the  world  outside,  that  a 
final  control  of  opinion  rests  always  with  each  individual  mem- 
ber of  an  association,  and  that  whatever  the  penalties  attached 
to  its  adoption.  Nor  was  this  all.  The  rejection  of  Lamennais 
from  a  society  he  so  deeply  loved  is,  when  the  last  criticism  of 
him  has  been  made,  still  a  tremendous  tragedy,  and  it  is  well 
to  enquire  into  its  conditions.     For  what,  basically,  was  he 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         261 

condemned?  He  had  no  faith  in  any  creed  except  Cathohcism. 
No  man  of  his  generation  had  more  eloquently  repelled  the 
seductions  of  alternative  creeds.  He  was  unequalled,  save  by 
de  Maistre,  in  the  unlimited  hope  he  placed  in  the  benefits  of 
papal  sovereignty.  It  is,  as  an  acute  observer  noted  at  the 
critical  epoch  of  Lamennais'  life,  little  less  than  astounding 
that  it  should  have  repulsed  the  one  man  of  genius  who  then 
lent  it  the  service  of  his  powers.^"' 

The  answer  involves  the  most  gigantic  problem  by  which  we 
are  confronted:  the  nature  of  corporate  personality.  Where- 
in that  personality  consists  is  sufficiently  matter  of  strenuous 
debate.  The  claim  of  Lamennais  was  that  the  real  basis  of  the 
church  was  not  its  doctrines  but  its  life.  He  saw  in  it  a  living 
society  which,  even  in  change,  remains  true  to  itself  and  not  a 
mass  of  individuals  united  by  a  chance  agreement  upon  certain 
formulse.^"^  The  conception  of  Rome  was  far  more  akin  to  the 
legal  interpretation  of  the  English  courts.  The  members  of 
the  church  were  to  it  simply  an  associated  body  of  benefici- 
aries who  profited  by  the  commands  enjoined  by  a  governing 
court.  In  such  an  aspect,  the  withdrawal  of  Lamennais  was 
inevitable.  If  he  could  not  obey  the  commands,  he  could  not 
profit  therefrom.  If  he  was  out  of  sympathy  with  its  dogma, 
he  was  out  of  accord  with  its  principles.  Yet  no  one  who  reads 
what  Lamennais  has  written  can  deny  his  essential  sympathy 
with  the  broad  aims  of  Catholicism.  If  Lamennais  had  lived 
in  the  time  of  Leo  XIII  his  condemnation  would  have  been 
extremely  dubious;  but  that,  to  say  the  least,  is  to  assert  that 
there  is  an  integral  part  of  the  Catholic  church  with  which  he 
was  at  one.  To  deny  the  validity  of  dissent  is  to  prohibit  the 
gro"wth  of  corporate  opinion,  to  insist  on  changelessness  as  the 
basis  of  the  church.  Yet  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  the  church 
has  changed,  impossible,  at  any  rate  till  answer  has  been  made 

'"'2  Cf.  the  very  interesting  comments  of  d'Herbelot,  "Lettres  a  Monta- 
lembert,"  pp.  88-9,  146.    These  were  written  as  early  as  1829. 

*°*  I  have  discussed  this  question  partly  in  my  paper  on  the  "Personality 
of  Associations,"  29  Harv.  L.  Rev.  404,  and  partly  in  that  on  "the  strict  in- 
terpretation of  ecclesiastical  trusts"  in  36  Canadian  L.  T.  190.  The  whole 
force  of  the  distinction  between  the  two  views  will  be  apparent  to  anyone 
who  compares  the  judgments  of  Lords  Halsbury  and  Macnaghten  in  the 
Free  Church  of  Scotland  case  as  published  in  Mr.  Orr's  verbatim  report. 


262         AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

to  its  own  historian's  account  of  its  councils,  or  to  the  masterly 
polemic  of  DolUnger.  Newman's  "Doctrine  of  Development" 
is  not  yet  on  the  Index;  and  it  is  simply  a  plea  for  the  recog- 
nition in  dogma  of  that  which  Lamennais  demanded  in  politics. 

For,  after  all,  he  was  asking  no  more  than  the  opportunity 
to  convince  the  church  of  the  superiority  of  one  way  of  life  to 
another — as  Saint  Francis  made  his  plea  for  poverty,  as,  in 
another  sphere,  the  Jesuits  made  demand  for  the  dogmatisa- 
tion  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.  He  did  not  ask  it  to 
change  its  personality,  any  more  than  Gerson  did  when  he 
would  have  federalised  its  government,  or  Mariana  when, 
contrary  to  the  later  teaching  of  Gregory  XVI,  he  issued  a 
justification  of  tyrannicide.^''*  For,  after  all,  the  collective 
experience  of  the  church,  the  sense  of  its  collective  experience, 
is  a  greater  thing  than  its  interpretation  at  any  given  moment 
of  its  history.  Papal  infallibility  meant  something  very  differ- 
ent to  Newman  from  what  it  did  to  Manning;  yet,  somehow, 
the  church  was  wide  enough  to  include  them  both.*°^  It  is 
characteristic  of  any  society,  whether  or  no  it  be  religious  in 
its  nature,  that  it  should  contain  elements  in  some  sort  diverse. 
We  cannot,  in  fact,  avoid  the  incessant  evolution  of  doctrine 
so  long  as  man  is  a  thinking  animal.  To  each  one  of  us  the 
fact  appears  somehow  different  and,  as  a  result,  the  interpre- 
tation can  hardly  coincide.*"^ 

It  means,  perhaps,  that  within  every  organisation,  as  within 
each  individual,  there  must  be  a  continuous  struggle  between 
life  and  tradition.  In  that  sense,  the  career  of  Lamennais 
would  be  intelligible  as  the  expression  of  a  moment  in  which 
tradition  was  victorious.  But  the  larger  problem  still  remains. 
To  ascribe  the  whole  life  of  a  society  entirely  to  one  element  or 
the  other  is  a  dichotomy  that  is  wanting  in  perspective.  It  is 
to  mistake  life  for  anatomy  or  physiology.  The  body  cannot 
function  without  its  background;    and  a  skeleton  is  still  dead 

^"^  Cf.  Figgis/'From  Gerson  to  Grotius,"  pp.  191-3.  On  all  this  his  fourth 
lecture  in  "Churches  in  Modern  State"  is  invaluable.  See  also  a  very  good 
little  book  by  Mr.  Richard  Roberts,  "The  Church  in  the  Commonwealth." 

"5  Cf.  My  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  Chapter  IV. 

^""^  On  all  this  the  reader  will  find  invaluable  assistance  in  the  two  famous 
books  of  M.  Loisy,  "  Autour  d  'un  petit  livre"  and  "Quelques  Reflexions." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        263 

matter,  even  if  it  have  living  form.  The  principles  of  any  so- 
ciety are  not  and  can  not  be  an  expression  of  the  totahty  of 
motives  by  which  men  bind  themselves  into  a  community.  For 
community  is  like  friendship  in  that  it  lies  too  deep  for  words. 
Its  relations  do  not  end  with  their  formal  utterance,  and  it 
subsists  even  where  majority  and  minority  conflict.  The  funda- 
mental thing  is  to  remain  true  to  the  life  of  the  society.  It  has, 
indeed,  principles  so  fundamental  that  their  violation  involves 
the  rejection  of  that  life.  One  could  not  deny  the  historic 
existence  of  Christ,  and  yet  remain  a  member  of  the  Catholic 
church.  If  the  basis  of  Lamennais'  condemnation  be  found 
here,  then  it  would  be  argued  that  the  alUance  of  Catholicism 
and  the  political  system  of  the  French  Restoration  is  funda- 
mental to  membership  of  the  church;  but  it  is  evident  that 
this  is  not  the  case.  That,  indeed,  is  the  weakness  of  Lamennais' 
ultramontane  teaching.  He  equated  the  church  with  its  head, 
and  he  found  himself,  in  the  result,  compelled  to  deny  the  truth 
of  his  infallibility.  From  the  standpoint  of  organisation  he 
discovered  that  while  it  might  have  its  conveniences  it  was  not 
free  from  grave  difficulty.  For,  once  admit  the  fact  of  variety, 
and  the  "tradizione  son  io"  of  Pius  IX  may  be  heresy  in  a 
coming  generation.  It  is  the  distinction  which  Rousseau  makes 
between  the  "general"  will  and  the  will  of  all.  The  "general" 
will,  in  this  aspect,  is  the  will  that  is  true  to  the  social  life  not 
at  any  given  moment,  but  in  the  broad  perspective  of  its  his- 
tory and  its  prospects.  The  "will  of  all"  is  the  will  that,  at 
a  given  moment,  gets  itself  obeyed.  In  an  Austinian  system 
like  that  of  Rome  the  "will  of  all"  becomes  concentrated  in 
the  person  of  the  pope.  We  judge  its  identity  with  the  will 
of  the  church  in  the  light  of  the  years  that  lie  ahead. 

The  quarrel  of  Lamennais  with  Rome,  in  fact,  goes  back  to 
one  of  the  decisive  moments  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  de- 
feat of  the  federalising  efforts  of  Gerson  and  Nicholas  of  Cusa 
at  the  great  council  of  Basle  in  1449  resulted  in  the  erection 
of  a  papal  absolutism.  It  is  the  decisive  step  on  a  road  that  lead 
logically  to  the  definition  of  papal  infallibihty  in  1870.  But 
the  result  was  to  give  to  Rome  exactly  thos'e  powers  against 
which  Lamennais  made  complaint  in  the  modern  state.  When 
the  Reformation  split  Europe  into  a  collection  of  diverse  sover- 


264        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

eignties  each  state  inherited  the  shattered  fragments  of  the 
Roman  imperium.  It  was  in  that  sense  that  the  obsequious 
ParHament  of  Henry  VIII  declared  the  reahn  of  England  to  be 
an  empire.  But  the  history  of  the  ensuing  three  centuries  is 
the  record  of  a  transference  of  sovereign  power  from  a  single 
head  to  the  general  body  of  the  state.  By  Rome  alone,  in 
Western  Europe,  was 'this  tendency  successfully  resisted;  and 
by  Rome  alone  has  the  maintenance  of  absolutism  been  con- 
sistently secured.  The  knowledge  of  her  vast  pretensions  was, 
throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  a  fertile  source  of  diplo- 
matic difficulty.  It  was  from  those  pretensions  that,  little  by 
little,  the  states  of  Europe  were  compelled  to  build  up  what  is 
essentially  an  alternative  scheme  of  civic  life.  It  was  those 
pretensions  which  made  of  toleration  the  ultimate  dogma  of 
modern  politics.  It  was  those  pretensions  which  resulted  in 
the  stern  control  of  Catholic  life.  The  Roman  church  was 
nowhere  free.  Her  claim  to  statehood  was  on  all  sides  met  by 
the  response  that  her  competing  system  of  allegiance  was  in- 
compatible with  the  sovereignty  of  the  state.  It  was  against 
the  assumption  that  the  sovereignty  of  the  state  must  be  unique 
that  Lamennais  made  his  first  protest  in  the  name  of  hberalism. 
It  was  a  claim  made  in  the  face  of  an  external  power.  It  did 
not  discuss  the  conditions  of  an  interior  life  within  the  church 
itself.  It  sought  only  to  show,  as  de  Maistre  had  attempted 
to  demonstrate,  that  in  her  corporate  freedom  Rome  will  find 
such  means  of  dominion  as  will  enable  her  to  govern  the  world. 
But  corporate  freedom  was  not  a  synthesis  in  which  a  system 
of  which  Metternich  was  the  symbol  could  find  comfort  or 
hope. 

From  the  protest  against  external  bonds  Lamennais  turned 
to  the  internal  life  of  the  church.  But  here,  too,  he  found  him- 
self confronted  by  a  similar  problem.  The  virtual  apotheosis 
of  the  Roman  pontiff  stifled  on  every  side  the  initiative  of  the 
individual.  There  was  no  limit  set  to  the  bounds  of  papal 
authority,  and,  as  a  consequence,  there  was  no  room  in  the 
church  for  any  save  those  who  agreed  with  the  expressed 
declaration  of  its  will.  Loyalty  was  interpreted  to  mean  not 
faith  in  the  future  of  the  church,  not  belief  in  the  principles 
of    its    creeds,    but    acceptance    of    the    political    principles 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE        265 

by  which  its  sovereign  chose  to  be  guided.  Of  course  such  a 
sovereignty  must,  in  practice,  have  been  Hmited  by  the  obvious 
facts  of  life.  But  where,  as  in  Lamennais'  own  case,  the  indi- 
vidual was  forced  to  dissent  from  the  conclusions  of  authority, 
no  choice  was  offered  between  obedience  and  expulsion.  He 
felt  that  the  Roman  theory  was  false.  The  liberalism  he  had 
applied  to  the  external  relations  of  the  church  he  endeavoured 
to  insist  must  be  true  of  her  internal  relations  also.  To  be  a 
true  church  her  will  must  be  the  will  of  her  whole  personality 
and  not  of  a  part  of  it.  It  must  synthesise  the  whole,  and  not 
a  part,  of  her  purpose.  It  must,  in  actual  terms,  be  something 
more  than  the  voice  of  a  feeble  old  man  dominated  by  an  ambi- 
tious and  grasping  bureaucracy.  They  substituted  their  private 
advantage  for  the  public  need,  and  the  church  paid  the  penalty 
of  such  prostitution  of  its  purposes. 

He  learned,  in  fact,  what  has  been  one  of  the  fundamental 
lessons  in  the  history  of  the  modern  state.  Disguise  it  how  we 
will,  the  sovereignty  of  the  state  will  mean,  in  the  long  run, 
the  sovereignty  of  the  rulers  who  govern  it.^°^  On  occasion,  in- 
deed, the  exercise  of  power  by  those  who  misrepresent  the 
general  will  may  result  in  their  dethronement;  but  history  is 
sufficiently  uncatastrophic  to  make  revolution  the  exception 
rather  than  the  rule  of  political  life.  Lamennais  might  protest 
that  the  sense  of  the  church  was  against  the  decision  of  Gregory; 
but  the  only  defence  he  could  make  was  an  appeal  to  the  future. 
That,  for  the  most  part,  is  the  defect  of  any  distinction  between 
the  will  of  the  state  and  of  those  who  govern  it.  The  latter, 
at  any  given  moment,  possesses  the  formal  attributes  of  sov- 
ereign power.  There  is  no  means  of  questioning  it  save  the 
means  of  patience.  But,  after  all,  the  counsel  that  truth  will 
eventually  prevail  is  a  maxim  for  eternity  rather  than  for 
mortal  men.  Lamennais  found  that  the  concentration  of  power 
in  the  hands  of  the  papal  government  deprived  him  of  every 
normal  means  of  protest  and  of  argument.  In  the  result,  there 
is  every  cause  to  understand  why  the  protagonist  of  ultramon- 
tanism  should  have  become  the  tribune  of  the  people. 

Nor  was  his  second  discovery  less  important.     He  had  him- 

^"^  I  have  discussed  in  detail  this  contention  in  the  first  chapter  of  this 
book. 


266        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

self  suggested  that  the  centrahsed  system  of  French  cival  ad- 
ministration neglected  the  welfare  of  the  provinces.  He  found 
that  the  centralisation  of  the  Roman  church  was  not  less  un- 
fortunate. Here,  again,  it  is  to  the  conciliar  movement  that  the 
main  thread  of  his  ideas  goes  back.  He  confronted,  intellectu- 
ally, exactly  the  situation  that  the  Europe  of  the  fifteenth 
century  confronted  in  matters  of  organisation.  An  England 
that  had  passed  its  statutes  of  Provisors  and  Praemunire  knew 
the  dangers  of  a  unitary  government.  The  plea  of  Gerson  was 
frankly  utilitarian  and  he  argued  that  "solus  popuU  suprema 
lex"  cannot  safely  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  centralisation.''"^ 
So,  too,  did  Nicholas  of  Cusa  speak  in  the  name  of  Germany 
when  he  made  his  striking  pica  against  the  reduction  of  a 
Christian  community  to  papal  serfdom.  The  difficulties  of  the 
sixteenth  century  were  material  difficulties — problems  of  finance, 
of  jurisdiction,  of  place.  Those  of  the  nineteenth  century  by 
which  Lamennais  was  confronted  were  spiritual  in  character, 
but  it  is  to  the  same  source  that  they  are  to  be  traced.  So  long 
as  the  powers  of  the  constituent  parts  of  the  Roman  church 
were  derivative  and  not  original  it  was  useless  to  contend 
against  the  papal  will.  The  Roman  bureaucracy  had  every- 
thing on  its  side.  It  was  useless  to  appeal  to  history  or  to 
tradition  for  of  these  the  Pope  was  the  appointed  interpreter. 
It  was  unmeaning  to  accuse  him  of  error,  for  he  had  been  made 
the  church  and  the  church  had  been  dignified  by  infallibility. 
It  was  useless  to  protest  that,  after  all,  the  Pope  was  a  man  and 
thus  subject  to  error.  It  was  the  future  to  decide  whether 
he  had  spoken  with  the  Jovian  thunder  of  an  ex-cathedra 
decision.  The  whole  problem  was  but  one  instance  of  the 
fundamental  truth  upon  which  Dr.  Figgis  has  insisted  that 
"wherever  blind  obedience  is  preached,  there  is  danger  of 
moral  corruption. "^"^  The  institution,  in  fact,  which  can  safelj'^ 
deny  the  necessity  of  criticism,  the  value  of  dissent  from  its 
conclusions,  the  resultant  good  of  a  re-examination  of  its  foun- 
dations, is  thus  far  unknown  to  human  history.  The  claim  of 
perfection  is  a  common  error  among  societies,  but  it  is  never 

408  Qf    Figgis,   "From  Gerson  to  Grotius,"  p.  64  f;    and  for  the  whole 
problem  of  Valois,  "Le  Pape  et  Ic  Concile,"  Vol.  I,  Ch.  II-III. 
^"'  Figgis,  "Churches  in  the  Modern  State,"  p.  154. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE         267 

made  save  where  there  is  evidence  of  decay.  The  omnipotent 
autocracy  of  Rome  revealed  its  ignorance  of  the  real  conditions 
of  social  existence  when  it  made  that  claim.  For  the  totality 
of  influences,  spiritual,  intellectual,  historic,  that  go  to  the 
building  of  a  community  are  not  to  be  resumed  in  the  dicta  of 
authority.  There  is  no  loyalty  compelling  enough  to  absorb 
the  affections  of  men.  All  that  we  can  hope  is  so  effectually 
to  exclude  the  possibility  that  its  demandtf  may  be  rejected 
as  to  minimise  the  dangers  of  anarchy.  But  that  is  only  to 
urge  that  the  basis  of  our  institutions  must  be  liberty. 

XII.  THE  INHERITANCE 

Once  again  in  her  history  Rome  was  given  the  opportunity 
to  make  her  peace  with  modern  life.  The  modernist  movement 
was,  of  course,  for  the  most  part,  and.  directly,  a  theological 
movement.  But,  indirectly  at  least,  the  problems  it  raised 
were  not  theological  questions  at  all,  but  governmental  ques- 
tions, and  it  was  a  discussion  as  to  the  nature  of  a  particular 
form  of  community  that  was  in  reality  the  main,  issue.  The 
critical  work  of  men  like  Loisy  may  have  provided  the  move- 
ment with  its  intellectual  penumbra.  He  doubtless  expressed 
its  yearnings  after  a  more  adequate  scholarship  with  an  ability 
that  has  made  him  one  of  the  most  striking"  figures  of  our  time. 
But  the  thinker  most  representative  of  the  modernist  spirit 
was  not  Loisy  but  Tyrrell. ^i"  For  it  was  Tyrrell,  above  all,  who 
realised  from  the  outeet  that  what  was  in  fact  in  debate  was 
the  nature  of  communal  authority.  He  never  denied  the 
fundamental  necessity  of  order  in  a  state;  where  he  was  in- 
sistent was  upon  the  limits  that  may  be  set  to  its  demands. 
He  was  not  a  scholar;  and  the  technical  details  of  M.  Loisy 's 
researches  he  doubtless  would  have  been  willing  to  concede  as 
beyond  his  purview.  What  he  essentially  urged  was  the  fact 
that  Catholicism  was  a  life,  and  that  the  only  unchanging 
principle  of  life  is  the  fact  of  change.     Like  Lamennais,  the 

""  Miss  Petre's  biography  is  our  main  authority.  His  most  important 
works  are  ( 1 ) "  A  M uch-abused  Letter ;"  (2)  "Through  Scylla  and  Charybdis ;" 
(3)  'MedievaUsm;"  (4)  "Lex  Credendi."  The  reader  will  also  find  much  of 
importance  in  the  two  volumes  of  essays  collected  under  the  title  "The. 
Faith  of  the  Millions. 


268        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

fundamental  burden  of  his  protest  was  a  regret  that  the  end 
of  CathoUcism  should  have  perished  in  pursuit  of  means. ^^' 
A  member  of  the  most  ultramontane  of  ecclesiastical  founda- 
tions, he  had  an  unique  opportunity  to  study  its  objects  and 
to  test  its  purposes.  It  was  by  the  deliberate  choice  of  conscience 
that  he  took  the  road  which  led  eventually  to  his  excommuni- 
cation. But  in  his  travelling  he  had  evolved  a  theory  of  social 
structure  which  is  one  of  the  most  precious  possessions  of  our 
time. 

The  real  problem  that  confronted  liim  was  the  place  of 
liberty  in  organised  life.  With  unlimited  individualism  he  had 
no  sort  of  sympathy;  for  the  rights  of  one  man  must  inevitably 
conflict  with  the  claims  of  another  and  order  is  essential  to 
the  maintenance  of  a  just  equilibrium.  So  he  saw  that  the 
Catholic  church  is  not  a  group  of  men  who  can  believe  any- 
thing they  please.  "As  to  dogmas  and  Cathohc  truths,"  he 
wrote,*i2  ''all  loyal  sons  of  the  church  are  bound  to  accept 
them."  That  is  no  more  than  to  say  that  the  Catholic  church 
has  a  certain  personality  loyalty  to  which  is  essential  to  mem- 
bership. But  he  saw  also  that  loyalty  to  the  Catholic  life  was 
not  the  same  thing  as  loyalty  to  its  government.  Where  that 
government  seemed  to  him  false  to  the  church  he  was  bound, 
as  Newman  held  himself  bound,  to  proceed  by  the  Ught  of  his 
conscicnce.^^^  "I  am  driven  on,"  he  wrote,^^^  "by  a  fatality 
to  follow  the  dominant  influence  of  my  life  even  if  it  should 
break  the  heart  of  all  the  world,"  and  thereby  he  proclaimed 
the  truth  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  every  scheme  of  social 
arrangement,  Rome  seemed  to  him  to  be  suffering  from  a 
feverish  worship  of  authority,  and  to  demand  as  a  consequence 
an  uncritical  and  unquestioning  obedience  from  Catholics  which 
it  is  not  in  human  nature  to  givc*^^  The  problem  then  con- 
fronted him  as  to  whether  he  should  obey  those  who  had  the 
technical  right  to  demand  his  submission,  or  follow  what  he 
believed  to  be  the  truth.  Like  Lamennais,  he  came  to  see 
clearly  that  in  such  a  choice  there  was  in  fact  no  real  alternative. 

^'1  "Life,"  II,  74. 
^'2  "Life,"  II,  129. 
*'' Ibid.,  11,  14  L 
*'*Ibid.,  II,  142. 
^"'  Ibid.,  II,  146. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        269 

What  baffied  him  was  the  unqualified  absolutism  of  Rome. 
She  was  not  amenable,  as  he  deemed/*^  to  the  arguments  of 
truth  and  justice.  The  seal  of  orthodoxy  was  set  upon  views 
which  virtually  denied  all  personality  to  the  church  as  a  whole 
to  concentrate  it  in  the  Pope  alone.^^^  But  such  a  view,  as 
Dollinger  had  long  before  shown,  was  totally  out  of  accord 
with  the  history  of  the  church.  "  It  is  in  the  collective  mind  of 
the  church,"  he  says,^^^  "not  in  the  separate  mind  of  the  Pon- 
tiff that  the  truth  is  elaborated  ....  so  the  Pope  cannot 
be  conceived  to  speak  excathedra  except  when  he  professedly 
investigates  the  ecumenical  mind."  Infallibility,  in  fact,  is 
reserved  for  those  occasions  where  the  papal  will  interprets  the 
"real"  will  of  the  church.  Obedience  then  becomes  due  not 
to  the  Pope  as  a  person,  but  to  the  Pope  as  the  registering 
centre  of  a  general  consensus  of  opinion.  But,  it  is  clear  enough, 
such  a  consensus  would  take  account  of  minds  like  Loisy  and 
Tyrrell  and  their  direct  condemnation  would  be  thus  impossi- 
ble. So  that  he  can  draw  a  distinction,  often,  indeed,  an  antithe- 
sis, between  obedience  to  authority  and  obedience  to  the  church, 
precisely  as  Lamennais  had  done  when  he  urged  that  Rome 
only  was  against  him.  Moreover  such  an  absolutism  was  obvi- 
ously bound  to  result  in  stagnation.  "  A  creed  and  a  theology," 
he  wrote,^^^  "ought  to  have  been  merely  and  only  the  product 
of  her  spiritual  life  and  its  exigencies."  But  in  such  an  aspect 
it  would  be  necessary  for  dogma  to  undergo  continuous  adapta- 
tion to  the  varying  needs  of  each  age.  The  difficulty  with  Rome 
was  exactly  her  use  of  sovereign  power  to  prevent  the  exercise 
of  that  adaptive  faculty.  She  claimed  to  project  her  decisions 
without  the  category  of  time;  and  by  claiming  an  immediately 
eternal  character  for  her  pronouncements  she  misunderstood 
the  nature  of  society.  For  the  "only  adequate  organ  of  re- 
ligious development"  was  to  him  "the  recognition  of  the  entire 
Christian  people  as  the  true  and  immediate  Vicarius  Christi."^-" 

The  distinction,  of  course,  is  fundamental;   it  is  the  distinc- 

«6  Ibid.,  II,  149. 
«'  Ibid.,  II,  156. 
"8  Ibid.,  II,  156. 
"9  Ibid.,  II,  185. 
«» Ibid.,  II,  191. 


270        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

tion  between  autocracy  and  democratic  government.  The 
"consciously  formulated  mind  and  will  of  the  governing  body 
of  the  church"  could  not  obtain  his  final  allegiance  just  because 
in  his  view,  it  mistook  its  class  interest  for  the  interest  of  the 
whole.*^^  That  governing  body  was  endeavouring  to  make  the 
life  of  the  church  run  into  channels  which  were,  in  fact,  not 
wide  enough  to  contain  it.  To  him  the  unconscious  self  of  the 
church  w^as,  equally  with  the  conscious,  the  personality  to 
which  he  owed  his  allegiance.^-^  The  fault  of  Rome  was  to 
neglect  that  deeper  life  and  it  had  thus  far  failed  in  its  work 
of  the  improvement  of  civilisation.  To  Rome,  then,  he  would 
owe  no  duty  save  that  of  doing  what  in  him  lay  of  bringing 
her  back  to  a  sense  of  her  greater  mission.  Nor  was  he  con- 
founded by  the  obvious  difficulty  that  if  the  government  of 
the  church  had  failed  no  one  could  officially  record  her  nature. 
"When  authority,"  he  wrote,^-^  "is  dumb  or  stultifies  itself, 
private  conviction  resumes  its  previous  rights  and  liberties." 
For  authority  is  based  upon  trust  and  the  violation  of  trust  is 
duly  resultant  in  its  dissolution. 

Such  a  distinction  between  clericalism  and  Catholicism^^*  is 
obviously  fundamental  enough.  The  weakness  of  individual- 
ism is  admitted,  and  the  purpose  of  submission  to  collective 
organisation  is  to  remedy  it.  "Our  courage  and  hope  and 
confidence,"  he  said  in  a  noble  passage,*^^  "arc  measured  by 
our  sense  of  the  strength  of  the  army  to  which  we  belong,  of 
the  history  of  her  past  victories."  But  the  victories  must  be 
the  victories  of  truth  and  the  strength  the  strength  of  virtue. 
To  share  in  a  collective  experience  is  not  to  be  assured  of  sal- 
vation effortlessly.  The  soldier  upon  whom  there  is  borne  in 
a  sense  of  purpose  so  wrong  that  the  whole  personaHty  of  the 
army  becomes  for  him  an  evil  thing  has  no  alternative  save  to 
lay  do^vn  his  sword.  That  does  not  mean  that  his  original 
membership  was  wrong.  "On  their  spiritual  side,"  he  said  of 
societies  in  general,*26  ''and  in  so  far  as  they  are  freely  self- 

«i  "A  Much-abused  Letter,"  p.  58. 

^^  Cf.  the  very  beautiful  passage  in  Ibid.,  p.  52  f. 

*"-^  Ibid.,  47. 

'^'  Ibid.,  66. 

*25  Ibid.,  83. 

«s  "Through  Scylla  and  Charvbdis,"  p.  Ki. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        271 

forming,  their  future  evades  all  prediction  since  it  is  not  con- 
tained in  or  predetermined  by  their  present  ....  spiritual 
development  is  not  a  process  of  passive  unfolding,  of  which 
each  step  is  vigorously  determined  by  the  preceding;  but  a 
process  of  active  reconstruction,  conditioned  by  the  chance 
materials  furnished  by  the  quite  incalculable  succession  of 
experiences."  Life,  in  fact,  refuses  the  categories  of  a  formal 
syllogism,  just  as  Lamennais'  ultramontanism  broadened,  by 
actual  contact  with  chance  experience,  into  a  liberal  doctrine 
so  wide  that  his  theology  was  absorbed  into  its  expanse.  So 
Tyrrell^  understood,  as  LamennaJ^  j;amg_to  see^  that  the  vital 
fact  in  membership  of  any  society  was  not  the  actual  bond  but 
that  of  which  the  bond  was  symbol.  Ho  was  compelled  by  his 
standards  of  right  not  merely  to  be  a  member  of  his  fellowship, 
but  also  to  stand  outside  and  judge  it. 

Nor  was  that  dualism  insignificant  since  it  formed  the  basis 
of  the  society's  authority.  "  It  is  not  their  red  robes,"  he  said/^^ 
"but  my  own  judgment  about  them  that  gives  the  pack  of 
cardinals  any  title  to  distinction.  Like  Elizabeth,  it  has  frocked 
them,  and  can  unfrock  them.  It  is  they  who  are  in  peril,  not 
we."  The  ability  to  withstand  such  a  judgment  is  surely  not 
the  test  of  social  worth.  It  is  obvious  enough,  in  religion 
above  all  things,  that  the  judgment  will  not  be  made  save  in 
the  most  decisive  conflicts  of  interpretation;  and  the  only 
criterion  of  adequate  compromise  is  the  conveyance,  on  one 
side  or  the  other,  of  genuine  conviction.  Nor  does  it  matter 
where  the  problem  of  conflict  shall  arise.  We  too  little  realise 
that  the  fundamental  principles  are  so  important  as  inevitably 
to  challenge  an  incessant  discussion.  Nor  is  it  less  inevitable 
that  the  existence  of  variety  in  temperament  should  result  in 
diversity  of  interpretation.  Newman  and  Manning  could 
never  have  agreed  in  the  meaning  they  attached  to  the  dogmas 
of  the  church  any  more  than  it  would  have  been  possible  for 
Cromwell  to  make  his  peace  with  Charles  I.  What  is  required 
on  both  sides  is  a  willingness,  not,  at  the  final  conflict,  to  use 
the  bludgeon  of  authority  instead  of  the  rapier  of  argument. 
It  was  exactly  the  lack  of  that  willingness  on  the  part  of  Rome 
which  resulted  in  her  mistaken  conception  of  authority.     So 

«'  "Life,"  II,  196. 


272        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

long  as  she  held  that  her  governmental  interpretation  of  dogma 
was  not  a  phase  but  eternal,  she  could  not,  as  Tyrrell  saw, 
but  be  hostile  to  intellectual  liberty.  Partly,  of  course,  her 
hostility  was  the  result  of  her  belief  in  the  divinity  of  her  mis- 
sion; but  even  when  the  temperamental  consequences  of  that 
attitude  are  admitted  grave  difficulties  remain.  For  even  if  it 
be  granted  that  the  Roman  church  is  an  eternal  society,  it 
has  had  periods  in  its  history  which  are  not  the  expression  of 
a  golden  age.  Did  she  not  forget,  as  Tyrrell  askedj'^^s  <'that 
development  means  death  and  decay  as  well  as  growth,  that 
it  means  continuity  only  by  way  of  reproduction  in  a  new  gen- 
eration?" Even  if  Rome  expelled  from  her  principles  the  idea 
of  development  she  could  not  destroy  it;  for  even  she  must  be 
bound  by  the  laws  of  nature. 

The  problem  Tyrrell  thus  confronted  in  the  church  he  found 
not  less  acute  within  the  Society  of  Jesus  itself.  In  the  whole 
range  of  theological  literature  there  are  few  analyses  more  in- 
comparable at  once  in  their  subtlety  and  their  simplicity  than 
the  account  he  penned  of  his  relations  with  the  Society. ^^^ 
Nothing  of  the  splendour  of  Newman's  own  Apologia  seems 
wanting  to  it;  and  it  has  the  additional  merit  of  being  written 
from  an  impersonal  attitude  that  only  adds  the  greater  weight 
to  its  authority.  It  begins  by  a  refutation  of  the  ordinary 
charges  against  the  Jesuit  order.  "I  do  not  see  in  the  Society 
of  Jesus  a  monstrous  and  deliberate  conspiracy  against  liberty 
and  progress  in  religion  and  civilisation."*^"  What  he  attacks 
is  the  attitude  of  those  within  the  order  who  object  to  criticism 
on  the  ground  of  disloyalty.  One  who  loves  the  society  to 
which  he  belongs  must  inevitably  work  for  it;  what  he  found 
was  that  to  work  for  the  interests  of  Catholicism,  as  he  under- 
stood them,  was  to  invoke  the  hostility  of  his  superiors.  To 
defend  liberahsm,  as  he  defended  it,  was  to  be  the  upholder 
of  a  cause  to  the  destruction  of  which  the  whole  forces  of  the 
Society  were  devoted.  Nor  could  he  change  its  purpose.  "The 
alterations  needed  to  adapt  it  to  our  days,"  he  wrote,''^^  "were 

«8  Ibid.,  II,  220. 

«» Ibid.,  II,  Ch.  XII,  and  the  letter  to  Father  Martin  printed  as  Ap- 
pendix III. 

«» Ibid.,  II,  272. 
«'  Ibid.,  277-8. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        273 

too  radical  to  be  ever  recognised  or  carried  out  by  a  body  whose 
supreme  government  was  vested  in  the  rare  assembly  of  a 
senate  of  men  ....  of  whom  only  about  one-eighth  repre- 
sented the  living  and  progressive  nationalities  of  the  world. 
Unable  to  progress  with  its  environment,  the  Society  could  only 
hope  to  live  and  to  retain  its  ascendency  in  the  church  by  keep- 
ing its  environment  unchanged."  He  did  not  blame  it  com- 
pletely. "Corporations  and  crowds  are  non-moral  agencies, 
and,  judged  by  the  standard  of  individual  ethics,  seem  to  com- 
mit atrocious  crimes  which,  in  fact,  are  no  more  crimes  than 
the  ravages  of  sea  and  storm,  or  of  brute  passion,  or  of  other 
natural  forces. "''^^  He  rather  dissented  from  the  whole  idea  for 
which  it  had  come  to  stand. ^^^  He  objected  to  its  exaction  of 
"a  slavish,  unintelligent  military  obedience"  which  destroyed 
the  whole  purpose  of  the  true  submission  to  society. ^^^  He 
regards  it  as  importation  from  state  to  church  and  as  "wedded 
to  principles  subversive  of  ...  .  social  order  and  prog- 
ress."^^^  It  has  become  less  a  zeal  for  progress  than  an  enthu- 
siasm for  mechanical  uniformity.  It  has  abandoned  its  trust 
in  unity  of  spirit  to  replace  it  by  a  juridical  compulsion.^^^  It 
has  neglected  the  manysidedness  of  personality.  "Even  a 
soldier,"  he  finely  says,^^^  "has  a  life  outside  his  barracks  in 
which  he  is  a  man  and  not  merely  an  instrument  ....  he 
does  not,  like  the  Jesuit,  deliberately,  as  a  matter  of  religion  and 
principle,  merge  his  whole  life  in  his  profession,  nor  of  set  pur- 
pose disown  his  personality  and  rights  as  a  free  spiritual  individ- 
ual." Yet  it  is  to  this  obedience  that  society  drives  its  mem- 
bers. It  sets  as  the  correlative  of  its  autocracy  an  obedience 
that  is  bUnd  and  uncriticising.  Such  a  method  "is  the  worst 
and  most  profoundly  immoral  forms  of  government  that  the 
world  has  yet  known.  For  the  essence  of  all  vice  and  immorality 
isJLhe  destruction  of  spiritual  liberty.  "^'^ 

«2  76id.,  II,  279.    Cf.  his  essay  on  the  Corporate  Mind  in  "Through 
Scylla  and  Charybdis." 
«3"Life,"  II,  465. 
«^  Ibid.,  II,  407. 
«6  Ibid.,  II,  469. 

«« Ibid.,  II,  476.  ■  >, 

"'  Ibid.,  II,  479  f. 
«^  Ibid.,  II,  481. 


274        AUTHORITY    IN   THE    MODERN   STATE 

He  does  not,  it  has  been  pointed  out,  blame  the  society  as 
he  would  blame  a  man.  "So  far,"  he  writes,^^^  "as  a  society 
has  a  self  at' all,  it  must  be  self-assertive,  self-complacent, 
proud,  egotistical;"  but  it  is  just  because  of  its  inherent  openness 
to  these  dangers  that  the  loyalty  of  its  members  dare  not  be 
unlimited.  "A  sane  and  healthy  loyalty,  far  from  blinding  a 
man,  will  make  him  keenly  critical  of  his  regiment  and  observ- 
ant of  its  defects  and  weakness,  and  will  check  any  sort  of 
dangerous  complacency  and  optimism."  He  insisted  on  the 
significance  of  the  influence  exerted  by  the  corporate  action  of 
the  society  upon  the  character  of  its  members.  He  denounced 
its  corporate  complacency.  "The  first  condition  of  progress 
and  improvement,"  he  said,*^°  "is  a  confession  of  fault  or  of 
fallibility."  But  this  the  society  virtually  refused  to  admit 
since  it  would  have  been  an  invitation  to  thought  upon  the  part 
of  its  members.  But  thought  was  incompatible  with  passivity, 
and  it  was  that  deadly  negation  of  personality  which,  above 
all,  the  society  desired. 

What  was  the  result?  "  I_seg^  in  Jesuitism,"  he  wrote,^^' 
".  .  .  .  just  the  counter-extravagance  of  Protestantism;  on 
this  side  liberty  misinterpreted  as  the  contempt  of  authority; 
on  that,  authority  misinterpreted  as  the  contempt  of  liberty. 
The  Society's  boast  is  to  have  stayed  the  spread  of  Protestant- 
ism and  to  have  saved  half  Europe  to  the  church.  Its  success 
has  been  its  ruin;  its  action  has  been  met  with  reaction;  in 
buttressing,  it  has  crushed  liberty  and  established  Absolutism 
....  The  true  synthesis  of  liberty  and  authority  is  still  to 
seek."  Assuredly,  Tyrrell  himself  did  not  pretend  to  supply  it. 
But  where  he  insisted  upon  the  extravagance  of  absolute  power 
he  was  surely  correct  in  his  assertions.  His  own  case  is  the 
clearest  proof  of  the  dangers  of  a  system  which  regards  itself  as 
immune  from  attack.  The  fact  is  that  Nature  expresses  herself 
less  in  absolutes  than  in  compromises.  It  may  be  true,  as  a 
distinguished  French  thinl^er  has  argued,'*^^  that  only  in  the 

"9  Ibid.,  II,  482. 
«» Ibid.,  II,  485. 
**'  Ibid.,  II,  497. 

<«Cf.  M.  Sorel's  preface,  p.  12,  to  M.  Berth's  "Los  M6fiiits  des  Intel- 
lectuals." 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    M  O  D  E  R  x\    STATE         275 

absolute  affirmative  can  the  seeds  of  progress  be  discovered; 
^eFTQie  genalty  of  such  formulation  is  the  inability  to  supply 
more  than  a  temporary  need.  Such  lack  of  elasticity  is  surely 
in  itself  evidence  of  an  unfitness  to  survive  in  an  environment 
where  the  true  criterion  of  worth  is  an  adaptability  to  a  chang- 
ing environment. 

Nor  is  this  all.  No  discussion  of  social  organisation  is  satis- 
factory' which  does  not  take  account  of  the  inherently  plural 
character  of  human  personality.  That  was  what  Tyrrell  meant 
by  his  urgent  insistence  upon  freedom.  For  however  rich  may 
be  the  genius  of  a  man  for  fellowship  he  has  also  an  inwardness 
of  perception  which  no  association  can  absorb.  Few  men  have 
been  more  passionately  at  one  with  the  church  than  was  Lamen- 
nais  before  1829 ;  yet  even  amidst  the  fever  of  a  passionate  activ- 
ity he  remained  a  brooding  and  lonely  being.  It  is  the  existence 
of  that  intimate  and  precious  arcanum  of  the  soul  which  makes 
loyalty,  in  the  last  analysis,  in  every  case  a  matter  of  the  private 
judgment  of  each  of  us.  Organisation  may  attempt,  as  Tyrrell 
urged  that  the  Society  of  Jesus  attempted,  to  root  out  the 
recesses.  Doubtless  a  long  training  in  subjection  to  despotism 
is  more  powerful  than  the  individual  will.  Yet  the  experience 
of  nations  seems  to  suggest  that  the  effect  is  one  rather  to  be 
stamped  afresh  upon  each  generation  than  to  be  inherited  by 
the  memory  of  a  people.  Excessive  authoritarianism  breeds 
less^  affection  for,  than  suspicion  of,  a  government.  For  it  is 
guilty  of  one  of  the  gravest  fallacies  in  the  business  of  adminis- 
tration by  its  effort  to  treat  men  as  uniform  machines.  No 
government  is  secure  which  fails  to  remember  the  uniqueness 
of.  the  individual.  Practical  legislation  may  take  the  greatest 
common  measure  of  consent  or  of  desire,  but  where  men  are 
driven  back  to  first  principles  it  is  only  moral  unanimity  that  is, 
as  the  fathers  of  the  church  were  wise  enough  to  realise,  in  the 
full  sense  effective.  Every  Ireland  will  have  its  Ulster^^  where 
fundamental  human  emotion  is  at  stake  and  no  theory  of 
society  that  neglects  it  will  be  adequate  because  it  will  be  then 
no  more  than  a  theory  of  coercion.  A  papal  condemnation  may 
drive  a  Montalembert  and  a  Hefele  into  acceptance  of  ideals  to 
which  they  have  been  a  stranger;    but  a  Lamennais  and  a 

"'  This  must  not  be  taken  to  indicate  a  belief  that  Ulster  has  been  right. 


276        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

Dollinger  will  remain  unmoved,  and  it  is  the  protest  that  will 
live  rather  than  the  acquiescence. 

In  the  last  instance,  then,  the  individual  can  make  his  appeal 
beyond  that  tribunal  which,  for  practical  purposes,  is  clothed 
with  sovereign  power.  "Above  the  constitutional  headship," 
wrote  Tyrrell,*^  "there  is  the  pre-constitutional,  which  is  a 
necessary  fact  and  not  a  doctrine.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  in 
the  life  of  that  formless  church  which  underlies  the  hierarchic 
organisation,  God's  spirit  exercises  a  silent  but  sovereign 
criticism;  that  his  resistlessly  effectual  judgment  is  made  known, 
not  in  the  precise  language  of  definition  and  decree,  but  in  the 
slow  manifestation  of  practical  results;  in  the  survival  of  what 
has  proved  itself  life-giving;  in  the  decay  and  oblivion  of  all 
whose  value  was  but  relative  and  temporary."  It  is,  perhaps, 
an  appeal  to  the  future;  but  it  is  an  appeal  to  which  judgment 
must  be  rendered,  since  it  takes  its  stand  upon  the  basic  char- 
acter of  the  institution  involved.  It  means,  of  course,  ulti- 
mately, a  refusal  on  the  part  of  men  to  accept  the  reduction  of 
social  form  to  unity;  for  such  reduction  implies,  as  we  have 
learned,  the  destruction  of  what  is  living  and  vigorously  in- 
dividual to  be  replaced  by  a  meaningless  uniformity.  A  Lamen- 
nais  who  surrendered  his  liberalism  otherwise  than  by  the  slow 
arrival  of  a  conviction  of  its  error  would  be  no  longer,  in  any 
real  sense,  the  Lamennais  we  know.  That  is  why,  despite  its 
practical  efficiency  as  a  working  instrument,  authority  must,  at 
every  stage  of  its  activity  submit  to  the  closest  scrutiny.  It 
must  not  so  exert  itself  as  to  involve  treason  on  the  part  of  its 
members  to  their  consciences.  From  some,  doubtless,  that 
treason  will  not  be  difficult  to  secure;  but  there  will  always  be 
those  who,  like  Lamennais  and  Tyrrell,  feel  themselves  bound  to 
show  "that  resistance  was  still  a  contingency  to  be  reckoned 
with  ....  that  Rome  was  trading  on  the  assumption  that 
the  idea  of  actual  obedience  had  so  triumphed  that  she  might 
say  or  do  anything,  however  reckless. "''^^  The  choice  has  its 
difficulties  and,  as  Tyrrell  finely  said,"*^^  "the  deliverers  of  the 
crowd  will  be  stoned  and  crucified  by  the  crowd   ....    (but 

"*  "Through  ScyHa  and  Charybdis,"  p.  381 
«5"Life,"  11,340. 
«« Ibid.,  II,  347. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        277 

when)  ....  the  reUgion  of  the  crowd  is  corrupted  .... 
there  we  cannot  be  with  the  crowd."  Both  of  them  saw  that 
Rome  had  gone  beyond  the  boundaries  of  her  real  purpose,  that 
she  was  asking  from  her  children  an  allegiance  to  ends  in  fact 
unconcerned  with  the  true  ethos  of  Catholicism.  To  Lamennais 
she  was  the  ally  of  despotism  as  to  Tyrrell  she  was  the  assailant 
of  civilisation  and  each  saw  the  fatal  prospects  of  her  effort. 
"  Rome,"  wrote  Tyrrell  in  a  letter  that  might  have  been  Lamen- 
naisV*' "  Rome^ares  nothing  for  religion — only  for  power  .  .  .  . 
Hmc  illae  lacrimae!  she  will  never  yield  willingly.  But  her  power 
will  soon  be  broken  to  pieces  by  the  pressure  of  modern  govern- 
ments— weary  of  her  turbulence  and  sedition;  and  then  per- 
haps she  may  have  no  reason  to  oppose  modernism  and  may 
remember  her  true  raison  d'etre."  But  until  that  return  had 
been  made  obedience  was  impossible.  "I  rightly  or  wrongly 
hold,"  Tyrrell  said  to  one  who  consulted  him  in  distress,*^^ 
"there  is  a  limit  to  ecclesiastical  as  to  civil  authority — a  time 
when  resistance  is  duty  and  submission  treason.  If  I  bejieve 
ihe  captain  is  unawares  steering  for  the  rocks  I  will  not  obey 
him.  I  am  not  infallible;  he  may  be  right;  but  I  must  go  by 
my  own  moral  certainties."  That  is  still  the  watchword  of  the 
deepest  freedom. 

Yet  there  is  one  weakness  in  Tyrrell's  attitude  upon  which 
it  is  worth  wlule  for  a  moment  to  insist.  There  are  few  things 
more  dangerous  than  the  effort  to  evolve  for  corporate  person- 
ality a  standard  of  judgment  different  from  the  criterion  by 
which  we  judge  of  the  conduct  of  men.  It  is,  of  course,  true 
enough  that  the  unity  of  corporate  life  is  less  strong,  in  the  sense 
that  it  is  less  tangible,  than  that  of  individual  personahty.  Yet 
it  is  clear  enough  that  in  law,  in  politics,  in  economics,  at  the 
present  time,  the  emphasis  of  our  needs  is  driving  us  to  an 
insistence  upon  vicarious  liability.  We  are  forced  more  and 
more  to  recognise  that  while,  in  the  last  resort,  a  corporate 
relation  is,  basically,  a  relation  of  individuals,  nevertheless,  for 
most  practical  purposes,  it  is  of  the  fact  of  their  unity  that  we 
must  take  notice.  How  Rome  is  built  up  matters,  to  outsiders, 
but  little;   but  the  influence  of  the  Rome  so  built  upon  modern 

^'  Ibid.,  II,  355. 
«8  rbid.,  II,  405. 


278        AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

life  matters  to  all  of  us  very  greatly.  A  modern  corporation 
acts  as  an  individual  would  act  in  a  similar  situation;  that  is  to 
say  by  agents  and  servants.  Surely,  if  that  be  the  case,  an 
adequate  interpretation  of  their  activities  must  take  account  of 
the  real  unity  whence  they  derive.^'*^ 

It  is  not  an  adequate  reply  to  answer  as  certainly  Tyrrell, 
perhaps  Lamennais  also,  would  have  answered,  that  the  "real" 
will  of  an  institution  may  differ  from  that  of  those  who  operate 
it,  that  the  will  of  the  Roman  Church  is  not  the  will  of  its  sov- 
ereign pontiff.  The  will  upon  which  our  judgment  must  be 
expressed  is  surely  the  will  that  is  promulgated  and  obeyed. 
The  dumb  and  enforced  acquiescence  of  a  people  may  be 
tragedy  enough;  but  if  the  cohesive  force  of  their  acquiescence 
is  bent  to  the  corporate  purpose  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the 
separation  of  their  acts  from  its  own  may  be  made.  For,  after 
all,  it  is  precisely  the  fact  of  their  acquiescence  which  permits 
the  registration  of  wrong.  The  only  course  is  active  dissent 
from  the  conclusions  of  authority,  as  both  Lamennais  and 
Tyrrell  implicitly  admitted  when  they  withdrew  from  the 
Roman  Communion  rather  than  follow  it  in  paths  they  deemed 
mistaken.  Lamennais  could  easily  have  urged  that  it  was  folly 
to  pit  his  strength  against  Rome  and  have  acquiesced  in  the 
condemnation  of  democracy.  Tyrrell  could  similarly  have 
insisted  that  his  single  effort  would  not  avail  to  teach  Rome  the 
inevitability  of  modernist  doctrine.  Yet  they  would  not  have 
been  Lamennais  and  Tyrrell  if  they  had  been  silent  even  where 
they  loved  so  greatly. 

For  the  fact  is  that  to  argue,  as  Tyrrell  argued,  that  a  social 
will  is  by  its  nature  more  liable  to  egoism  than  an  individual 
will  means  surely  no  more  than  the  answer  that  we  must  then 
be  more  vigorous  in  the  application  of  our  standards.  Our 
judgment  that  corporate  sin  is  more  easily  to  be  excused  is 
probably  no  more  than  an  inference  from  the  separation 
Machiavelli  effected  between  politics  and  ethics.  How  fatal 
that  step  has  been  Lord  Acton  has  magist rally  demonstrated  in 
a  famous  argument.''^'^    It  is,  in  short;  a  simple  excuse  for  wrong- 

«»  Cf .  my  papers  in  29  Harv.  L.  Rev.  404  and  26  Yale  Law  Journal  122  f. 
^"""Cf.  the  great  inaugural  lecture,  rej)rinted  in  his  "Lectures  in  Modern 
History"  with  the  introduction  to  Mr.  Burd's  edition  of  "The  Prince." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        279 

Cul  conduct.  Because,  as  in  the  famous  Taff  Vale  case,  men  will 
do  things  for  their  trade  union  which  they  would  hesitate  to  do 
in  private  life,  that  is  no  reason  to  excuse  an  institution  of  which 
the  nature  demands  illegal  activities  from  its  agents.  Because 
the  church  of  Rome  was  anxious  to  discredit  the  efforts  of  the 
French  republic,  that  does  not  justify  the  activities  which 
culminated  in  the  curious  tissue  of  falsehood  and  corruption 
revealed  by  the  publication  of  the  nuncio's  dispatches.'*^^  If  we 
are  definitely  wedded  to  a  complex  scheme  of  group-loyalties, 
the  only  method  of  moral  safety  is  to  demand  from  each  group 
the  standards  exacted  from  its  individual  member.  The  argu- 
ment so  often  and  so  unthinkingly  made  about  the  non-existence 
of  corporate  mind  misses  the  point  completely.  We  are  dealing 
with  unified  action  and  we  cannot  mistake  the  real  character 
of  its  personality.  We  have  too  recently  had  demonstration  of 
the  tragic  evil  which  comes  from  elevating  it  without  the  moral 
law,  to  be  willing  to  allow  it  release  from  the  penalty  of  its  cor- 
porate offences. 

Such  an  attitude,  indeed,  would  serve  to  strengthen  the  posi- 
tion of  Lamennais.  It  is  no  more  than  the  affirmation  that 
what,  above  all,  we  need  is  the  democratic  interpretation  of  the 
principles  of  authority.  We  refuse  to  reduce  the  individual  to  a 
nullity  simply  because  he  is  a  human  being.  The  basis  of  our 
social  organisation  is  living  and  not  mechanical;  it  is  founded 
upon  the  consciences  of  men.  It  does  not  conceal  from  itself 
the  dangers  to  which  it  lies  open.  Consciously,  it  is  a  threat 
against  order.  Consciously,  it  offers  a  loophole  to  what  may 
well  resolve  itself  into  revolution.  But  that  is  only  because  we 
are  certain  that  the  supreme  thing  in  the  modern  world  is  the 
love  of  what  men  deem  to  be  right,  ^society:  which  is  able  to 
admit  the  protest  of  its  members  has  already  safeguarded  itself 
against  the  shock  of  disruption.  If  the  principle  of  its  life  be 
^e  exclusion  of  fundamental  dissent,  that  life  is  already  poisoned 
at  its  source.  That  was  why  Tyrrell  flung  abroad  his  flaming 
protest  against  the  evil  of  absolutism.  The  individual  doubt- 
less, will  often  be  mistaken  just  as  authority  itself  has  never 
been  free  from  error.      Yet  in  the  clash  of  ideas  we  shall 

*^^  Cf.  the  collection  of  documents  published  as  "Les  Fiches  Pontificales 
de  Monsignor  Montagnini"  (Paris,  1908). 


280        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERxN   STATE 

find  the  means  of  truth.  There  is  no  other  safeguard  of 
progress. 

XIII.  CONCLUSION 

Lamennais  never  returned  to  the  Cathohc  church.  He  hved 
and  died  and  suffered  with  those  for  whom  he  had  chosen  the 
path  of  exile.  His  ideas  grew  more  and  more  Hberal  until, 
towards  the  end,  he  found  himself  in  close  kinship  with  the 
apostles  of  communism.  Of  the  love  the  common  people  bore 
him  there  is  evidence  enough;  and  his  pen  was  ceaselessly 
employed  in  the  task  of  their  liberation.  He  found  new  friends 
who,  in  some  measure,  at  least,  healed  the  wounds  that  had 
been  caused  by  the  defection  of  the  old.  The  church  made 
divers  efforts  to  secure  his  conversion  but  always  without 
success.  His  death  seems  to  have  meant  but  little  to  a  democ- 
racy that  was  being  fed  on  the  dangerous  fruits  of  imperial 
adventure.  Yet  even  as  it  was,  so  great  was  the  honour  of  his 
name  that  the  government  of  Louis  Napoleon  compelled  his 
interment  in  the  earlier  hours  of  dawn.  He  was  buried,  as  he 
had  wished,  without  any  religious  ceremonial;  and  it  was  by 
his  request  that  Auguste  Barbet  refused  the  usual  offer  of  a 
cross.    That  was  perhaps  less  an  epitaph  than  a  prophecy. 


CHAPTER  FOUR 

THE  POLITICAL  THEORY  OF  ROYER-COLLARD^ 

I.   THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  RESTORATION 

THE  restoration  of  the  Bourbon  House  created  more 
problems  than  it  solved.  It  was  intended  by  the  allies 
less  as  a  consecration  of  political  doctrine  than  as  the 
refutation  of  the  Napoleonic  idea.  It  had,  indeed,  the  merit 
of  preserving,  to  some  ext^jnt,  the  self-respect  of  the  French 
nation  by  returning  to  it  a  ruler  supported  by  every  historic 
tradition  in  France  anterior  to  the  Revolution.  But  it  was 
exactly  therein  that  its  error  is  to  be  found;  for  to  make  ab- 
straction of  the  Revolution  had  already  become  impossible. 
The  new  system,  in  fact,  was,  from  the  outset,  incapable  even 
of  understanding  the  problems  with  which  it  was  called  upon 
to  deal.  Those  who  had  returned  with  Louis  from  exile  in 
nowise  perceived  that  new  and  acceptable  dogmas  had  already 
replaced  the  prejudiced  privileges  of  the  ancien  regime.  They 
came  not  to  fulfil  but  to  destroy.  They  did  not  reaUse  that 
even  the  despotic  system  of  Napoleon  had  taken  due  account 
of  the  revolutionary  spirit.  They  were,  above  all  things,  eager 
to  restore  the  social  and  political  edifice  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. They  did  not  understand  that  their  principles,  no  less 
than  their  methods,  were  already  obsolete. 

For  the  Revolution,  despite  its  excesses,  had  been  a  fruitful 
epoch  in  political  thought.  It  had  been  an  incredible  experi- 
ence in  the  formation  of  political  habits.     Those  who  had 

^  The  fundamental  authority  is  the  life  of  de  Barante  which  collects  the 
text  of  Rover's  speeches.  M.  Faguet  has  a  brilliant  study  of  him  in  the 
first  volume  of  his  "  Politiques  et  Moralistes"  to  which  I  am  much  indebted. 
There  is  a  useful  little  life  by  Spuller;  and  M.  Nismes-Desmarets  has 
recently  published  a  laborious  and  exhaustive  analysis  of  his  political 
doctrines.  The  essay  by  Scherer  in  the  first  volume  of  his  "Etudes"  and 
that  by  C.  de  Remusat  in  the  second  of  his  collected  papers  are  both  of 
much  value. 


282        AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

tasted  the  sweets  of  national  sovereignty  were  not  willing  to 
resign  their  power  because  Napoleon  had  been  beaten  upon 
the  battlefield.  From  the  thousand  strands  of  the  complex 
web  of  the  Revolution,  a  certain  order  and  meaning  had  eventu- 
ally emerged.  The  idea  of  privilege  had  suffered  a  final  shock. 
The  sovereignty  of  the  state  had  been  transferred  from  king  to 
people.  The  Declaration  of  Rights  had  embodied  an  enthusiastic 
belief  in  the  dignity  of  human  personality  which  suggested  the 
potentialities  of  a  new  and  profitable  organization  of  society. 
The  idea  of  toleration,  if  it  had  been  bent  by  the  oppression  of 
Napoleon  and  the  unclean  craftiness  of  Fouche,  was  far  from 
broken.  The  third  estate  had  arrived  at  manhood;  from  being 
nothing  it  had  come,  as  in  Sieyes'  superb  prophecy,  to  demand 
all.  If  it  was  a  serious  limitation  upon  democratic  growth  that 
the  workers  should  have  been  excluded  from  power  still,  when 
nobility  and  bourgeoisie  stood  face  to  face,  the  prospects  of 
advance  were  fortunate.  For  no  one  could  doubt  where  the 
victory  must  one  day  lie. 

Little  enough,  indeed,  of  all  this  was  perceived  by  those 
whom  the  downfall  of  Napoleon  had  swept  into  power.  What 
rather  is  remarkable  is  the  rapidity  with  which  the  old  order 
was  established  again.  The  reaction  was  as  thorough-going  as 
the  Revolution;  and  even  if  the  essential  work  of  the  Revolu- 
tion had  penetrated  too  subtly  into  the  structure  of  the  social 
fabric  to  be  overthrown  at  all  speedily,  signs  are  not  wanting 
that  it  was  not  for  lack  of  ill-will  towards  it.  The  Restoration 
divides  itself  clearly  into  three  periods;  and  only  in  one  brief 
moment  was  there  the  faint  hope  that  a  compromise  with 
Uberalism  might  be  effected.  No  justification  save  that  of 
revenge  can  ever  be  found  for  the  pitiless  extravagance  of  the 
reaction  which  followed  the  Hundred  days;^  not  even  the  com- 
bined efforts  of  a  king  and  government  which  alike  took  no 
satisfaction  in  persecution  were  able  to  withstand  the  brutality 
of  its  effort.  From  1816,  when  the  moderation  of  M.  Decazes 
stayed  for  a  period  of  four  years  the  desire  of  royalism  to  come 
to  death-grips  with  the  remaining  factions  which  clung  to  the 
ideas  of  1793,  there  was  hope  of  peace.     But  the  period  was 

^  M.  Viviani  has  finely  described  it  in  his  contribution  to  Jaures'  "His- 
toire  Sociahste."    See  Vol.  VII  p.  99,  103. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        283 

full  of  troubles  and  dissension;  and  the  assassination  of  the 
Due  de  Berri  persuaded  Louis  that  a  compromise  with  liberal- 
ism was  an  invitation  to  disaster.  Henceforth,  as  M.  Scherer 
has  finely  said,^  it  was  already  Charles  X  who  ruled.  The 
system  that  the  charter  had  endeavored  to  inaugurate  was 
struck  at  its  foundations.  The  reactionary  efforts  of  the  Roy- 
alists only  spurred  their  opponents  to  greater  violence.  It  was 
the  old  antagonism  between  the  emigres  and  the  Revolution 
in  which  the  former  had  learned  that  the  methods  of  parlia- 
mentary government  can  be  used  to  effect  an  administrative 
despotism.  Henceforth  they  had  no  other  object;  and  the  bar- 
ricades of  1830  were  the  one  possible  answer  to  their  pretensions. 
It  was  an  assault  upon  individualism  that  they  attempted; 
and  thinkers  were  not  lacking  who  were  willing  to  invent  a 
theory  upon  which  to  embroider  the  necessity  of  oppression. 
Nor  is  the  passion  by  which  they  were  inspired  unintelligible 
to  a  generation  which  has  felt  the  .shock*  of  an  European  catas- 
trophe. They  proclaimed  the  superiority  of  society  to  the  in- 
4iyi(iuia.l  and  drew  therefrom  the  inference  that  their  own  self- 
interest  might  be  equated  therewith.  To  the  revolutionary  in- 
sistence that  only  by  his  own  efforts  could  man  create  an  ade- 
quate civilisation,  they  retorted  that  the  only  true  creation 
could  come  from  the  hands  of  God.  Where  the  Revolution 
had  asserted  the  significance  of  novelty  they  affirmed  the  su- 
preme value  of  tradition.  They  sought  out  the  true  principles 
of  social  order  and  discovered  them  in  the  antithesis  of  revolu- 
tionary doctrine.  Whether  their  interest  was  in  politics,  as 
with  Bonald,  or  in  religion,  as  with  Lamennais,  it  was  always 
the  secret  of  unity  for  which  they  were  searching.  They  were 
convinced  that  the  source  of  the  Revolution  had  been  the 
weakness  of  authority  and  they  sought  to  re-establish  it  upon 
an  unshakeable  foundation.  They  had  no  experience  of  a 
world  in  which  power  might  be  safeguarded  by  its  dispersion. 
All  they  could  understand  was  its  expression  in  the  ancient 
terms.  They  considered  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  in- 
dividual to  the  state  and  answered  unhesitatingly  that  he  must 
be  absorbed  by  it.  It  is  the  beatification  of  the  status  quo  and 
it  is  very  intelligible.    Their  fundamental  desire  was  to  safe- 

»  "Etudes,"  I,  68. 


284        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

guard  a  system  which  they  believed  essential  for  social  salva- 
tion. That  it  happened  to  coincide  with  their  retention  of  the 
control  of  the  state  was  perhaps  rather  accidental  than  the 
result  of  set  purpose.  For  they  were,  in  some  sort,  empirical 
in  their  outlook.  They  had  a  real  sense  of  the  growth  of  insti- 
tutions.^ Thej^  set  themselves  firmly  against  a  political  theory 
which  should  fit  its  facts  to  an  a  'priori  system.  But  their  em- 
piricism was  essentially  emotional  and,  in  reaUty,  it  signified 
no  more  than  the.translation  into  facts  of  their  political  desires. 
Their  sense  of  development  was  limited  to  their  respect  for 
certain  well-worn  and  traditional  avenues  of  growth.  They 
were  almost  amazingly  unable  to  understand  that  the  Revolu- 
tion was  a  fact  no  less  than  a  tragedy;  and  their  effort  to  ignore 
its  meaning  was  only  evidence  of  their  intellectual  limitation. 

The  truth  simply  is  that  they  were  in  no  real  sense  seekers 
of  truth.  PoUtical  ideas  for  them  were  essentially  offensive 
weapons.  They  held  themselves  at  liberty  to  misinterpret 
ideas,  to  falsify  conclusions,  to  distort  purposes.  Their  view 
of  human  nature  was  uniformly  low  and  they  were  never  logical 
enough  to  admit  that  their  viUfication  must  apply  equally  to 
themselves.  They  seized  upon  a  single  fact  in  the  political 
history  of  France  and  made  of  it  a  gospel  of  defiance.  Power 
was  theirs,  and  the  efforts  of  philosophers  and  evil  men  had 
hurled  them  from  what  was  rightly  their  own.  What,  then, 
they  had  to  do  was  to  search  out  the  conditions  upon  which 
the  maintenance  of  its  restoration  might  be  possible.  Of  the 
obvious  change  in  social  perspective  they  took  no  account. 
That  commercial  growth  and  intellectual  discovery  was  ren- 
dering obsolete  the  paternal  system  for  which  they  stood  spon- 
sor they  had  no  shadow  of  perception.  That  the  source  of  au- 
thority in  anything  so  complex  as  a  political  society  can  never 
in  fact  be  single  they  did  not  in  the  least  degree  understand. 
They  wished  the  people  well;  but  the  possession  of  will  they 
restricted  to  themselves.  They  did  not  grasp  the  basic  fact 
that  the  state  is  in"  truth  no  mofcThan  a  will-organisafrdn  and 
that  if,  on  occasion,  that  will  may  result  in  unified  activity 
that  gives  no  guarantee  of  i)crmanent  unity.  They  misunder- 
stood the  conditions  of  state-life.    They  did  not  perceive  that 

♦Cf.  II.  Michel,  "L'Id6e  do  I'Etat,"  p.  167  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        285 

there  are  always  limits  to  the  exercise  of  power.  They  were 
so  nicely  tender  of  their  own  consciences  that  they  did  not 
admit  the  existence  of  conscience  outside  their  own  order. 
They  were  so  satisfied  with  their  manipulation  of  the  state 
that  they  mistook  their  private  good  for  the  general  welfare 
and  Paris  retorted  in  its  usual  fashion  to  that  error. 

Their  theocracy,  in  brief,  was  as  violent  as  the  passionate 
democracy  they  so  virulently  condemned.  Yet  it  is  important 
to  remember  that  their  ideas  were  not  confined  to  France. 
The  war  of  liberation  resulted  in  England  in  seventeen  abortive 
years  of  stagnation  and  distress.  The  very  poets  who  had 
written  hymns  to  liberty  found  excuses  for  the  deferment  of 
its  application.  The  typical  English  statesman  of  the  age 
was  Eldon;  and  the  toryism  he  represented  was  not  less  pro- 
found than  that  of  France.  The  English  bishops  adopted  an 
attitude  to  Catholic  emancipation  which  suggested  nothing  so 
much  as  a  belief  that  England  was  the  private  appanage  of 
the  English  church.^  The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  little  more 
able  to  appreciate  the  drift  of  opinion  than  the  Prince  de 
PoUgnac.  If  England  avoided  a  theoretical  revolution,  the 
Reform  Act  of  1832  was  symbolical  of  a  new  era  in  the  history 
of  political  structure.  It  was  the  admission  that  Toryism  was 
dead,  and  when  Sir  Robert  Peel  became  Prime  Minister  bis 
first  act  was  to  recognize  that  a  revolution  had  been  silently 
effected. 

Nor  was  the  reaction  less  marked  in  Germany.^  The  effort 
of  Savigny  was  toward  nothing  so  much  as  the  dethronement 
of  the  rationalism  by  which  the  eighteenth  century  had  been 
distinguished.  ''Law,"  he  said  in  effect,  "cannot  be  made  at 
the  behest  of  men;"  and  if  he  was  justified  in  his  emphasis  on 
the  thousand  forces  that  go  to  its  construction  he  was  yet  as 
surely  transforming  the  doctrine  of  evolution  into  a  defence  of 
conservatism.  His  theory  of  legislative  function  is  so  precisely 
the  antithesis  of  that  of  Rousseau  as  naturally  to  occasion  the 

*  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  123.  The  intellectual  current  of 
time  is  finely  analysed  in  Professor  Dicey's  classic  "Law  and  Public 
Opinion,"  Lect.  V. 

^  The  really  admirable  essay  of  R.  Haym  "Die  Romantische  Schule"  is  a 
mine  of  wisdom  upon  this  problem. 


286        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

suspicion  that  he  was  answering  the  latter.  His  sacrifice  of^ 
the  individual  to  the  state,  his  insistence  upon  the  superronty 
of  its  life  to  that  of  its  constituent  parts^  could  be  used,  in  the 
hands  of  Hegel,  as  the  high  road  to  a  thoroughgoing  absolutism. 
Herder  and  Schelling  could  find  sufficient  beauty  in  the  romance 
of  Rome  to  disguise  the  direction  in  which  its  ideals  were  bend- 
ing. Fichte  did  not  hesitate  to  absorb  the  individual  in  the 
state.*  In  such  an  analysis  pcrsonahty  becomes  no  more  than 
the  opportunity  to  become  part  of  an  immense  organism  in 
which  no  interstices  are  to  be  found.  But  such  negation  of  the 
individual  mind  is,  in  fact,  no  more  in  its  results  than  a  the- 
ocracy in  which  God  has  been  replaced  by  the  King  of  Prussia. 
Germany,  in  fact,  threw  off  the  bonds  of  Roman  despotism  only 
to  demonstrate  that  the  root  of  her  objection  was  less  to  the 
despotism  than  to  its  foreign  character.  So  she,  too,  could 
forge  the  weapons  which,  in  Bismarck's  hands,  were  to  stimu- 
late the  ideal  of  a  world  reduced  to  an  unity  expressed  in  terms 
of  German  dominion. 

Liberalism,  in  such  an  attitude,  was  clearly  difficult  enough. 
Much  of  this  distrust  of  freedom  was,  of  course,  intelligible. 
It  was-  a  dictum  of  Sir  Henry  Maine's  that  progress  is  the 
exception  in  history;  and  certainly  in  each  epoch  of  novel 
ideas  the  universal  tendency  of  those  who  hold  the  reins  of 
power  has  been  to  insist  upon  the  virtue  of  traditional  system. 
They  feared  so  greatly  the  movement  of  liberal  ideas  that  it 
seems  never  to  have  occurred  to  them  that  they  might  be 
harnessed  to  government.  They  met  the  proclamation  of  belief 
with  an  emphatic  defiance;  and  demonstrated  once  more  the 
danger  that  is  inherent  in  the  very  fact  of  power.  Those  who 
stood  by  the  cause  of  freedom  in  these  difficult  years  had 
much  obloquy  to  undergo.  To  accept  the  fact  of  the  Revolu- 
tion was  held  to  be  synonymous  with  a  justification  of  its  ex- 
cesses. To  put  the  individual  outside  the  state,  to  deny  his 
absorption  by  the  various  loyalties  by  which  he  was  bound, 
was  regarded  as  giving  a  handle  to  every  sort  and  kind  of 
dangerous  ambition.    Anyone  who  reads  the  long  list  of  legis- 

7  Cf.  his  "Heutige  System  das  Rom.   Rechts,"  Bk.  I,  Ch.  II,  Sec.  9. 
*  Ilis  "Geschlossene  Handelstaat"  (1800)  is  a  striking  example  of  this 
attitude. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        287 

lative  efforts  during  the  Bourbon  Restoration  can  make  no 
mistake  as  to  its  nature.  Control  of  the  judiciary,  censorship 
of  the  press,  restriction  upon  the  right  of  association,  laws  of 
exception,  limitation  upon  the  right  of  franchise,  a  system  of 
military  privilege^ — by  these  on  every  hand  we  are  confronted. 
The  idea  of  toleration  seems  almost  dead.  The  generous  en- 
thusiasm of  1789  is  hardly  to  be  perceived.  It  is  a  cynical 
generation,  mistrustful,  wearied,  without  conviction  of  prog- 
ress, without  courage  to  experiment.  It  is  a  generation  that 
has  seen  its  parents  gamble  for  their  lives  and  conceived  a 
natural  distaste  for  adventure.  Yet  it  is  also  a  generation  re- 
deemed from  unrelieved  suspicion  of  men  by  the  devoted  eager- 
ness of  some  few  of  its  most  distinguished  figures.  A  generation 
in  which  Guizot  learned  the  principles  of  representative  gov- 
ernment and  in  which  Royer-Collard  united  to  ethics  the  poli- 
tics from  which  it  had  been  too  long  divorced,  is  not  entirely 
without  its  fascination.  It  serves,  at  any  rate,  to  enforce  the 
lesson  that  even  the  most  vicious  of  political  systems  contains 
\vithin  itself  the  germs  of  self-destruction. 

II.  THE  THEORY  OF  THE  CHARTER 

There  is  little  or  no  dramatic  interest  in  the  life  of  Royer- 
Collard.  He  was  a  typical  member  of  the  bourgeosie  whom 
one  at  least  of  his  opponents  did  not  hesitate  to  characterise 
as  jealous  of  the  ancient  nobility. ^°  He  sat  in  the  National  As- 
sembly, and  his  deep  opposition  to  the  Jacobin  policy  resulted 
in  a  narrow  escape  from  the  guillotine."  With  the  coming  of 
more  moderate  days  he  sat  in  the  Council  of  Five  Hundred  and 
was,  for  a  time,  the  cherished  adviser  of  the  exiled  Bourbons. 
In  the  Napoleonic  regime  he  withdrew  from  political  life  and 
occupied  himself  with  the  study  of  philosophy  as  a  lecturer  at 
the  Sorbonne.  With  the  return  of  Louis  XVIII  he  took  a  dis- 
tinguished place  in  the  lower  house  of  the  Chamber  of  Depu- 
ties and  remained  there  almost  to  his  death.  Apart  from  a 
place  on  the  Council  of  State,  a  directorship  in  the  council  of 

'  Cf.  the  speech  of  Royer-Collard,  Barante,  1,  371  f. 

">  Villele,  "Memoires,"  I,  346. 

"  See  the  splendid  story  of  his  escape  in  the  Life  by  Spuller,  p.  29-30. 


288        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Public  Instruction  and  a  brief  Presidency  of  the  Chamber,  he 
held  no  political  office.  He  was  in  sympathy  with  no  adminis- 
tration save  at  a  single  moment  in  his  career.  Save  for  his 
association  with  Guizot,  De  Serre  and  Camille  Jordan,  it  is 
not  untrue  to  suggest  that  he  never  belonged  to  a  political 
party  in  the  sense  of  merging  his  convictions  with  those  of  a 
group  of  men.  His  authority  came  from  the  power  of  his  elo- 
quence, the  impressive  distinction  of  his  personality,  the  sub- 
stantial splendour  of  his  convictions.  He  was,  indeed,  a  difficult 
colleague.  He  had  a  sufficient  sense  of  his  power  to  make  others 
reahse  a  httle  acutely  his  awareness  of  it.^^  jjg  -^y^g  regarded 
for  so  long  as  infallible  by  a  group  of  admiring  friends  that  he 
came,  in  the  end,  almost  to  share  their  convictions  upon  that 
question.i^  His  spirit  was  difficult  alike  from  his  mistrust  of 
power  and  of  its  exercise,^'*  as  from  his  persistent  and  disdainful 
refusal  of  office.^^  Whether  Villele  is  right  in  his  suspicion  that 
his  aloofness  came  from  a  pride  that  had  been  hurt  by  the 
ingratitude  of  Louis  XVIIP''  the  fact  remains  that  while  he 
was  willing  to  disturb  ministers  he  was  never  eager  to  construct 
them.  Of  his  private  life  we  know  little  or  nothing;  and  though 
his  love  of  Pascal  is  evidence  enough  of  his  sincere  attachment 
for  the  somewhat  mellowed  Jansenism  amidst  which  he  was  edu- 
cated, we  have  little  enough  evidence  whereby  to  estimate  its 
influence  upon  his  opinions.  A^Lthat  jcan^be  saidjQf_.the  rn^n 
himself  is  that  he  was  sincere,  that  he  was  honest,  and  that  he 
was  deservedly  eminent.  There  have  been  few  men  in  history 
whose  life  is  so  completely  to  be  sought  in  the  doctrines  that 
he  preached. 

The  name  that  has  become  attached  to  his  school  is,  in  truth, 
in  no  small  degree  misleading.  We  tend  to  think  of  the  Doctrin- 
aires as  a  body  of  men  who  applied  arid  principles  to  circum- 
stances for  which  they  are  unsuited.  It  is  much  more  accurate 
to  compare  them  to  that  Fourth  Party  which  rendered  so  great 
a  service  to  English  politics  in  the  last  century.     Different  as 

"  Cf .  VitroUes,  "Memoires,"  III,  73. 

''  Cf.  remarks  of  the  Duchess  de  Broglic  in  Barante,  "Memoires,  "II,  374. 

"  Cf.  Guizot  "Memoires"  (Eng.  trans.),  I,  117. 

"  Spuller.  op.  cit.  154 

18  Villele  op.  cit.  II,  46. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE        289 

were  their  constituent  personalities,  the  four  men  in  each  were 
invaluable  alike  from  the  independence  as  from  the  ability  of 
their  criticism.  Each  continually  drove  back  government  upon 
the  principles  from  which  it  took  its  vise,  principles  too  often  so 
implicit  in  the  business  of  deliberation  as  to  be  forgotten  by 
those  whom  they  inspire.  Not  that  the  Doctrinaires  were  any 
clearer  than  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  in  their  ultimate  meta- 
physic.  What  surrounds  them  is  less  a  theory  than  an  atmos- 
phere, so  that  M.  Michel  could  without  injustice  claim  that 
what  they  attempted  was  simply  the  analysis  and  justification 
of  a  certain  interpretation  of  circumstances.^^  Yet  the  assertion 
is  perhaps  less  true  of  Royer-Collard  than  it  is  of  his  colleagues. 
Anyone  who  compares  the  political  theory  of  Guizot  with  his 
policy  as  minister  will  not  be  inclined  to  doubt  the  grotesque 
flexibility  of  his  ideas.  Royer-Collard 's  attitude  was  in  every 
situation  consistent.  If  he  seemed  to  be  effecting  a  compromise 
between  the  ancien  regime  and  the  Revolution,  he  would 
probably  have  explained  his  effort  by  justifying  it.  The  whole  of 
his  life  was  spent  in  the  insistence  that  government  depends  upon 
rational  principles  of  compromise.  He  was  alike  opposed  to  the 
gloomy  extravagances  of  royalism  as  to  the  democratic  pre- 
tensions of  the  disappointed  heirs  of  the  Revolution.  •  Each 
signified  for  him  the  party  of  a  despotism  and  he  endeavored  to 
search  out  the  philosophy  of  a.  juste  milieu.  It  was  thus  that  he 
was  led,  as  Guizot  has  aptly  remarked, ^^  to  the  maintenance  of 
interests  rather  than  the  affirmation  of  rights.  That  was  why 
he  equally  condemned  the  Chambre  Introuvable  and  the  ideas 
of  1793.  For  he  believed  that  the  true  analysis  of  political 
structure  renders  impossible  any  conception  of  national  inter- 
ests which  suggests  their  unified  nature.  He  on  the  contrary 
insisted  that  the  state  is '  composed  of  interests  often  antag- 
onistic between  which  an  equilibrium  must  be  maintained  by 
compromise.  The  maintenance  of  that  balance  was  the  busi- 
ness of  government  and  it  was  in  that  very  absence  of  unity  that 
he  therefore  discovered  merit;  for,  by  its  very  nature,  it  set, 
as  he  deemed,  a  limit  to  the  abuse  of  pov/er. 

What,  in  fact,  is  the  keynote  of  his  whole  doctrine  is  the 

"  Michel,  "L'Id6e  de  L'Etat,"  p.  291. 

18  Guziot,  "Memoires"  (Eng.  trans.),  I,  154. 


290        AUTHORITY   IX   THE   MODERN   STATE 

denial  of  the  existence  of  sovereignty.  He  admitted  the  exist- 
ence of  power,  but  he  was  always,  as  Guizot  remarked,^^  a  mor- 
alist who  was  suspicious  of  its  exercise.  The  result  was  his 
insistence  that  its  necessary  limitations  should  be  discovered 
and  it  was  to  that  search  that  he  devoted  himself.^"  The  pecu- 
liar expression  of  policy  for  which  he  stood  was  embodied  in  the 
charter.  To  him  the  charter  was  not  so  much  a  compromise 
as  a  solution.  He  never  seems  to  have  realised  how  unwillingly 
it  had  been  drawn  from  the  restored  king.  He  did  not  feel, 
with  so  many  of  his  contemporaries,  its  lack  of  clarity.  He  did 
not  understand  their  refusal  to  believe  in  its  certainties.  "  For 
all  of  us,"  Barante  has  said,^^  "it  was  simply  a  formality  exacted 
by  circumstances  and  destined  to  perish  with  them.  The  Lib- 
erals saw  with  what  repugnance  and,  consequently,  with  how 
little  good  faith,  submission  had  been  made  to  the  necessities  of 
the  Revolution."  Royer-Collard  did  not  regard  it  in  this  way. 
Sceptical  of  all  things  he  may  have  been  by  nature  ;^2  but  in  the 
virtues  of  the  charter  he  put  complete  confidence.  It  was  for 
him  a  touchstone  by  which  the  Tightness  of  all  action  might  be 
tested.  He  looked  upon  it  as  the  crystallised  experience  of  the 
whole  of  French  history. 

It  was  the  expression  of  such  limitations  upon  the  exercise 
of  power  as  the  past  seemed  to  suggest.  Sovereignty  of  king 
and  people  it  alike  rejected.  The  one  presupposed  a  despotism 
and  the  other  a  republic.  But  France  by  her  political  nature 
was  a  monarchy  in  which  the  king  governed  by  means  of  his 
ministers.  He  chose  his  ministers  and  his  will  was  law.  But 
upon  his  action  a  vital  check  was  laid.  The  Chamber  of  Depu- 
ties was  a  deliberative  council  resort  to  which  gave  government 
the  means  of  realising  wisdom  in  legislation.-^  Since  the  object 
of  royalty  was  to  translate  into  action  the  balance  of  interests 
within  the  Chamber  the  result  was  to  limit  the  possibility  of 
despotic  government.  Neither  king  nor  Parliament  was  therefore 
sovereign  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  power  of  each  was  lim- 

>9  "Memoires,"  1,  117. 

20  Barante,  "Life,"  II,  130. 

2»  "Memoires,"  Vol.  I,  p.  385. 

22  Ibid.,  Ill,  20. 

2'  Barante,  I,  219. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        291 

ited,  either  in  practice  or  in  theory.  To  each  was  assigned  func- 
tions which,  while  they  might  involve  the  exercise  of  will,  never 
admitted  the  possibility  of  a  will  without  control.  The  king 
was  government,  and  government  might  involve  the  exercise 
of  force;  but  the  problem  was  always  the  extent  of  force  to  be 
used  and  the^  test  was  the  principles  of  the  Charter,  Nor  did 
he  admit  an  uncontrolled  right  in  the  people.  They  represented 
only  the  brute  mass  of  men  and  he  would  not  admit  that  the 
mere  agglomeration  of  numbers  would  justify  the  exercise  of 
sovereign  powers.  The  despotism  of  many  was  for  him  still 
a  despotism,  and  he  rejected  it,^^  He  would  no  more  admit  that 
principles  so  fundamental  can  be  contradicted  by  tradition  or 
number  than  he  would  have  admitted  the  justice  of  extrava- 
gance. 

The  psychological  background  of  this  attitude  it  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  discover.  The  abuse  of  sovereignty  under  the  ancien 
regime  had  resulted  in  the  despotism  of  the  Convention.  In 
each  case  the  claim  of  uncontrolled  power  had  resulted  in  the 
destruction  of  liberty.  It  did  not  matter  that  in  one  case  that 
lack  of  limitation  could  give  itself  historic  background.  It  was 
unimportant  that  in  the  other  men  were  tasting,  for  the 
first  time,  a  right  which  they  had  been  too  long  denied.  He  saw 
clearly  that  some  system  of  checks  and  balances  was  essential 
if  order  and  peace  were  to  be  safeguarded.  That  safeguard  he 
discovered  in  the  Charter.  It  was  the  connective  tissue  of  the 
body-politic.  It  represented  the  principles  upon  which  the  state 
could  with  security  lead  its  life.  To  say  that  the  charter  was 
the  source  of  law  was  to  say  that  any  specific  exercise  of  power 
was  in  accord  with  the  tradition  of  France.^^  And  the  charter 
divided  power.  If  it  gave  the  king  the  power  of  government, 
it  gave  power  of  criticism,  of  suggestion,  of  grievance  to  the 
aristocracy  and  the  delegates  of  the  people.  So  complex  is  its 
scheme  of  contribution  to  law-making  that  when  the  act  is  on 
the  statute-book  none  can  in  reality  say  whence,  exactly,  it  is 
derived.  But  that  is  to  show  that  the  charter  is  successful.  It 
is  to  admit  that  varying  interests  have  combined  in  a  result 
which,  because  limited  by  all,  is  acceptable  to  all, 

2^  Ibid.,  II,  152,  463. 

^  Cf,  Faguet,  op.  cit.,  I,  263. 


292        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

It  is  the  whole  history  of  France  that  he  finds  in  the  charter.^^ 
Long  centuries  have  gone  to  its  painful  elaboration.  It  was 
needful  that  he  should  urge  the  accuracy  of  this  fiction  in  order 
thereby  that  he  might  counterbalance  the  strength  of  royalism. 
For,  clearly,  that  upon  which  he  was  engaged  was  the  substitu- 
tion of  a  rule  of  law  for  a  rule  of  force.  Unless  he  could  gain  the 
admission  that  the  strength  of  a  law  is  not  the  chance  acquies- 
cence of  a  majority  behind  it  the  administration  of  power  would 
be  therein  deprived  of  its  moral  significance.  But,  to  that  end, 
it  was  essential  that  he  should  not  have  to  struggle  against  the 
past  and  he  prevented  that  catastrophe  by  annexing  it.  He  saw 
quite  clearly  that  two  powers  stood  face  to  face.  The  monarchy 
had  elaborated  the  dogma  of  personal  sovereignty;  the  Revolu- 
tion had  transferred  it  to  the  nation.  If  he  could  emphasise  the 
legitimacy  of  the  one,  by  which  he  meant  its  full  accord  with  the 
national  tradition,  he  could  then  insist  upon  the  significance  of 
the  other.  He  could  point  out  that  the  decline  of  royal  absolu- 
tism was  only  the  growth  of  a  condition  already  inherent  in  the 
ancien  regime.  France  was  the  synthesis  of  many  sovereignties 
which  need  not  always  claim  a  royal  origin.^^  They  had  Uved 
together;  and  that  was  to  say  that  the  conception  of  a  balance 
of  internal  powers  was  already  old.  What  the  Revolution  had 
done  was  to  abolish  those  sovereignties  and  to  leave  the  indivi- 
dual face  to  face  with  the  state.  "Nous  ne  sommes  pas  citoy- 
ens,"  he  said  in  an  effective  phrase,^^  "nous  sommes  des  admin- 
istres,"  and  the  problem  was  to  prevent  the  submergence  of  the 
individual  that  had  been  effected  by  the  centralisation  of  power. 

That,  in  effect,  was  the  object  of  the  charter.  The  path  from 
the  despotism  of  the  ancien  regime  to  the  new  despotism  of 
the  Revolution  was  largely  accidental  but  equally  dangerous. 
"La  democratic,"  he  said  in  a  famous  sentence,  "coule  a  pleins 
bords  "2^  and  there  was  for  him  no  need  to  suspect  it  of  needing 
safeguards  any  more  inherent  than  the  ancient  monarchy  had 
possessed.'  What  then  it  clearly  became  necessary  to  do  was  to 
put  certain  states  of  fact  beyond  the  reach  of  ordinary  adminis- 

« Ihid. 

"  Barante,  II,  13. 
"  Ihid.,  II,  131. 
"  Ihid.,  II,  134. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE       ^293 

tration.  France  had  become  egalitarian  and  centralised.  The 
pressure  of  its  parts  must  not  overwhelm  certain  principles  that 
safeguard  the  fullness  of  life.  These  principles  are  rights  in  the 
possession  of  which  the  individual  will  find  protection  against 
absorption.^"  These  rights  will  be  general  in  character;  Jacques 
Bonhomme  has  been  made  the  center  of  the  French  state  by  the 
Revolution.  They  will  be  private  rights  in  the  sense  that  they 
attach  to  individual  personality.  But  they  will  be  general  in 
that  unlike  the  rights  of  the  ancien  regime  they  will  not  be  ex- 
ceptional in  character.  They  will  replace  the  old  privileges  that 
the  flood-tide  of  1789  had  borne  away  upon  its  eddies.  They 
will  be  a  centre  of  inviolability  and  thus  a  limitation  upon  power. 
Therein  he  finds  of  course,  the  main  source  of  their  virtue. 

III.    NECESSARY  FREEDOMS 

Broadly  speaking,  the  liberties  which  lie  at  the  base  of  his 
system  were  four  in  number.  Liberty  of  the  press  he  would 
perhaps  have  regarded  as  most  fundamental.  It  was,  for  him, 
not  merely  a  condition  of  political  liberty,  but,  even  more,  its 
very  foundation.^^  That  it  might  result  in  abuse  he  would  cer- 
tainly not  have  denied  any  more  than  he  would  have  refused  to 
punish  the  violation  of  the  right  to  publication.^^  fhe  problem 
for  him  was  to  find  the  conditions  under  which  the  right  could 
be  most  wisely  exercised.  It  was  wrong  to  dispair  of  a  solution. 
It  was  wrong  because  the  result  of  so  desperate  a  conclusion  must 
result  either  in  an  anarchy  or  in  despotism.^^  But  it  was  only 
by  means  of  the  press  that  the  ideas  of  the  mass  of  men  might 
become  known.  Such  knowledge  clearly  must  set  limits  to  the 
exercise  of  power.  It  is  a  safeguard;  for  it  is  from  popular 
silence  that,  above  all,  the  idea  of  despotism  draws  its  richest 
nourishment.  "Power,"  he  said  in  a  striking  sentence,^^  "like 
the  individual,  has  its  temperament,  its  manner,  its  natural 
instinct."  But  that  is  to  say  that  it  is  capable  of  being  influ- 
enced, and  freedom  of  the  press  was  a  valuable  weapon  to  that 

30  Ibid.,  I,  298. 

31  Ibid.,  I,  340. 

32  Barante,  II,  500. 
33 /bid.,  1,341. 

3*  Ibid.,  I,  349. 


294        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

end.  Its  inconvenience  to  government  he  in  no  sense  denied; 
but  he  attributed  that  inconvenience  less  to  the  inherent  nature 
of  thought  than  to  the  absorptiveness  of  power.  So  long  as  a 
desire  for  arbitrary  action  is  checked  at  every  point  of  its  ad- 
vance by  those  whose  business  it  is  to  examine  its  justification, 
its  translation  in  fact  is  sufficiently  remote  to  ensure  the  general 
security .^^  That  in  practice  it  will  become  the  possession  of  a 
few  he  knew.  But  he  was  unwilling  to  leave  at  the  mercy  of 
government  the  surest  method  of  criticising  it.  It  was  a  barrier 
against  absolution.  In  his  eyes  it  needed  no  further  justification. 
It  was,  indeed,  for  him  the  replacement  of  those  old  checks  on 
the  abuse  of  monarchy  which  had  characterised  the  ancien 
regime.  Just  as  the  independent  magistracies  of  ancient  France 
had  limited  the  full  exercise  of  sovereignty  for  the  common 
good,  so  is  freedom  of  the  press  a  political  institution  which 
safeguards  the  rule  of  law.  "The  day  on  which  it  perishes," 
he  said,^^  "is  the  day  on  which  we  shall  return  to  servitude."  He 
insisted,  moreover,  upon  its  necessity  for  another  reason.  The 
democracy  of  France  was  full  of  spirit  and  energy.  It  was  pos- 
sible to  direct,  it  was  impossible  to  destroy  its  progress.  What 
it  meant  was  the  admission  of  an  ever  greater  number  of  men  to 
the  full  benefits  of  civilisation.^^  Nothing  so  surely  prevented 
the  growth  of  wrongheaded  thinking  in  a  changing  society  as  the 
free  interchange  of  thought.  Democracy  had  power;  and 
nothing  was  more  useless  than  the  failure  to  recognise  that  the 
possession  of  power  meant  influence  in  the  work  of  government. 
The  whole  problem  by  which  they  were  confronted  was  the 
instruments  by  which  that  power  should  be  exerted.  To  de- 
prive the  people  of  a  liberty  which  had  taken  such  deep  root  in 
France  was  to  destroy  the  surest  guarantee  of  peace.  It  was  to 
drive  underground  ideas  which  must  then  translate  themselves 
into  action  without  the  purifying  influence  of  criticism  and  of 
correction.^^  It  was  to  offer  no  alternative  between  conquest 
and  resolution.  It  resulted  in  the  profanation  of  Justice.  "The 
only  remedy  for  libcrtv  "  he  said  in  a  magnificent  speech,^^ 

'5  Ibid.,  II,  132. 
»6  Barante,  II,  133. 
"  Jbid.,U,  134. 
'8/6?;fi.,  II,  13S. 
^^Ibid.,  11,  293. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        295 

"is  prison,  the  only  remedy  for  intelligence  is  ignorance."  But 
uporTboth  of  these  it  is  only  the  most  dishonourable  of  gov- 
ernments that  takes  its  stand. 

In  similar  fashion  he  demanded  freedom  of  religious  belief. 
Every  church  was  a  power  in  the  state  and  its  danger  to  the 
body  politic  could  only  be  mitigated  by  the  admission  of  its 
freedom."*"  That  was  why  a  privileged  church  resulted  in  dis- 
content as  it  was  why  a  theocracy  was  the  most  dangerous  form 
of  absolute  rule.^^  For  to  add  to  political  power  the  sanction  of 
religion  was  to  make  captive  the  intelligence  of  men.  That  was 
why  a  church  to  which  freedom  had  been  guaranteed  was  a  per- 
petual pledge  of  private  liberty.*^  It  was  the  admission  that 
there  is  no  institution  so  vast  as  to  absorb  the  complete  alle- 
giance of  man.  It  made  him  conscious  of  his  duty  to  his  intel- 
ligence which,  in  fact,  is  his  duty  to  his  humanity.  It  results  in 
the  freedom  of  his  soul.  It  insists  upon  the  development  of  his 
conscience.  It  enables  him  to  refuse  submission  to  wrong  by 
the  creation  of  a  criterion  of  right  which  is  not  merely  the  judg- 
ment of  the  state.  It  is  a  powerful  safeguard  of  originality 
because,  by  reminding  the  citizen  of  the  perpetual  duty  of  polit- 
ical judgment,  it  guards  that  individualism  which  makes  him 
adamant  against  the  assault  of  absolute  power. 

Nor  is  he  less  insistent  upon  the  influence  of  religious  freedom 
on  the  church  itself.  Where  the  church  is  free  it  is  an  association 
of  consciences  and  at  once  a  moral  element  is  introduced  into 
its  composition.^^  It  is  a  republic  within  the  state,  an  associa- 
tion which  sets  limits  to  the  demand  the  state  may  make  upon 
its  members.  But  once  its  freedom  is  changed  into  state-union 
the  conditions  of  value  disappear.  Inevitably  it  becomes  offici- 
alised. Inevitably  those  who  direct  it  are  compelled  to  subvert 
it  to  their  purposes  from  the  very  temptations  it  offers.  It  lives 
on  the  bounty  of  the  state  and  the  price  of  its  maintenance  is  at 
least  its  silence  and  in  general  its  support.  It  brings  to  the  cen- 
tralised power  a  source  of  authority  of  which  the  possession  is 
fraught  with  danger.    It  gives  a  reUgious  sanction  to  state-de- 

*"  Barante,  II,  99. 
^1 II,  103. 
« Ibid.,  II,  100. 
« Ibid. 


29G        AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

cisions  which  are  in  fact  entirely  without  relation  to  ecclesias- 
tical purposes.  It  aggravates  the  possibility  of  despotism  by 
tinging  government  with  the  suspicious  colours  of  theocracy. 
It  offers  temptation  in  another  direction.  It  asks,  inevitably, 
for  privileges.'*^  It  desires  to  exalt  itself  at  the  cost  of  its  com- 
petitors. It  ceases  to  regard  any  conscience  other  than  its  own. 
It  puts  itself  under  the  protection  of  the  political  police.  It  sub- 
mits the  choice  of  its  rulers  to  government.''^  It  meddles  in  the 
appanage  of  temporal  power.  What  it  may  gain  in  dignity  it 
loses  in  independence.  It  becomes  a  social  magistracy,  and  the 
basic  purpose  of  its  existence  is  diverted  to  temporal  ends.  He 
cannot  resist  the  comparison  between  the  simplicity  and  effec- 
tiveness of  the  catholic  church  in  England  and  the  stately  gran- 
deur of  the  Anghcan  Church. ^^  The  latter  he  regarded  rightly 
as  no  more  than  the  creature  of  the  civil  power.  It  had  ceased 
to  be  a  church  and  had  been  debased  into  an  establishment. 
("Let  a  religious  organisation,"  he  said,'*^  "be  exclusive  or  ever 
Idominant  and  one  may  rest  assured  that  its  ministers  will  be 
/  frich  and  important  in  political  life,  that  they  will  exercise  a  vast 
dominion  and  intervene  without  cessation  in  civil  life' to  bring 
it  under  their  own  control."  No  one  who  reads  the  history  of 
the  Church  of  England  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
can  doubt  that  it  is  an  illustration  of  this  general  principle.  No 
one  who  is  acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  Catholic  Church 
in  France  under  the  ancien  regime  can  mistake  the  fact  that  it 
was  exactly  from  these  vices  that  it  suffered.  It  was  nonsense, 
in  his  eyes,  to  argue  that  a  state  which  does  not  profess  some 
definite  religious  belief  is  already  atheist. ^^  The  choice  is  not 
between  infidelity  and  theocracy.  The  choice  is  between  the 
use  of  an  illegitimate  weapon  for  wrongful  purposes  and  the 
admission  that  the  function  of  religion  does  not  enter  into  the 
field  of  politics.  The  charter,  as  he  insisted,  had  recognised  its 
value  by  giving  it  the  means  of  independence.  It  offered  them 
the  protection  of  the  law;   but  it  realised  so  far  the  danger  of 

♦*  Barante,  I,  321. 
*^Ihid.,  II,  101. 
«  Ibid.,  II,  100. 
*■>  Ibid.,  II,  101. 
^"Barante,  II,  250. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE        297 

choosing  out  some  form  of  faith  for  especial  favour  that  it  pre- 
ferred the  lonehness  of  a  complete  impartiality  between  them.^' 
The  recognition  of  hterary  freedom  and  religious  independence 
is  the  admission  of  impalpable  influence.  Both  result  less  in 
the  control  of  practical  power  than  in  the  creation  of  an  at- 
mosphere in  which  it  may  be  suitably  restrained.  The  one 
throws  the  full  glare  of  public  criticism  on  governmental  ac- 
tivity. The  other,  by  its  refusal  to  admit  the  entire  absorption 
of  the  individual  in  the  state,  gives  him  a  certain  externality 
which  quickens  the  public  conscience  by  its  insistence  on  the 
significance  of  the  elements  which  go  to  the  constitution  of  the 
whole.  But  more  than  that  is  required.  Power  that  is  uncon- 
trolled in  practical  affairs  can  hardly  be  limited  by  theoretical 
criticism.  It  is  only  when  opposition  becomes  materialised 
into  a  legal  barrier  that  we  have  real  safeguards  against  abso- 
lutism. Such  a  safeguard  he  believed  to  exist  in  the  immova- 
biUty  of  the  magistrate.  Just  as  the  admission  of  freedom  of 
conscience  puts  a  conscience  outside  the  state  that  account 
may  be  taken  of  its  actions,  so  does  the  permanent  tenure  of 
judicial  office  involve  the  admission  that  not  even  the  state 
can  transgress  the  principles  of  justice.  It  is  the  guarantee  of 
impartiality  in  the  fundamental  process  of  the  state.  The 
judge  is  the  guardian  of  all  the  natural  and  social  rights  of 
man.^"  It  is  upon  his  integrity  alone  that  they  depend.  The 
whole  existence  of  society  is  dependent  upon  the  satisfactory 
administration  of  his  office.  But  even  a  judge  is  human  and 
he  needs  protection  against  his  frailties.  If  the  fear  of  dismissal 
is  before  his  mind  he  must  inevitably  be  affected  in  his  decisions 
by  the  result  they  will  exercise  upon  his  career.  He  is  given 
permanent  tenure  in  order  that  he  shall  be  free  from  such  a 
possibility.  He  is  immovable  because  he  is  then  in  a  position 
to  protect  the  principles  of  the  charter  even  against  those  who 
appointed  him  to  office. ^^  His  immovability  simply  connotes 
his  independence.  It  is  a  recognition  of  the  fallibility  of  the 
state.  It  sets  a  limit  to  the  temptations  ot  power.  Undoubt- 
edly, he  is  a  functionary  of  the  state;  but  he  is  a  functionary 

"  Ibid.,  II,  252. 
■^"Barante,  I,  171. 
'^  Ibid.,  I,  172. 


298        AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

appointed  for  the  express  purpose  of  protecting  society  against 
itself."  It  is  the  guarantee  of  those  privileges  that  reason 
demonstrates  to  be  necessary  to  social  welfare. 

Yet  all  these  liberties  he  counts  as  nothing  compared  to  the 
supreme  privilege  of  parliamentary  government.  This,  above 
aTT,  is  the  final  check  upon  absolutism.  This,  above  all,  pro- 
vides the  mass  of  men  with  the  material  means  of  guaranteeing 
a  regime  of  liberty.  For  what,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  meant  by 
parliamentary  government?  The  right  of  self-determination 
in  finance  and  of  its  supervision  when  the  vote  has  been  made.^^ 
Liberty,  at  bottom,  is  a  matter  of  hard  purchase.  You  keep 
the  government  in  the  path  of  right  conduct  by  the  potential 
refusal  of  the  means  of  its  subsistence.  Should  its  foreign 
policy  displease  you  can  refuse  the  funds  for  its  support.  If  its 
domestic  administration  is  unjust,  you  may  keep  your  hands 
in  your  pockets.  It  is,  perhaps,  somewhat  rude  as  a  govern- 
mental method;  yet,  of  all,  it  is  the  most  efficacious.  It  effects 
a  practical  revolution  without  the  destruction  of  a  single  life. 

Of  course  it  is  itself  a  power  that  has  its  dangers;  and  few 
have  sketched  more  vividly  than  Royer-Collard  the  inherently 
sinister  potentialities  of  a  parliamentary  system.  It  tends,  by 
its  nature,  to  absorb  the  very  power  it  limits.^*  Instead  of 
making  laws,  of  applying  the  principles  of  the  Charter  to  the 
political  situations  which  may  arise,  it  desires  to  invade  the 
executive  function  and  to  undertake  the  actual  work  of  admin- 
istration. That  is,  of  course,  simply  a  manifestation  of  the 
thirst  for  power  which  is  common  to  every  person  and  institu- 
tion. But  when  a  parliament  attempts  it,  it  steps  outside  its 
proper  sphere.  Government  requires  rapid  decision,  secret  de- 
termination, continuous  resolve. ^^  It  must  in  the  last  resort 
be  unified  action,  the  action  of,  at  the  most,  a  small  group  so 
single  in  thought  as  to  act  as  one  will.  With  a  modern  parlia- 
ment he  denies  that  such  action  is  possible.  It  is  responsible 
to  the  nation  and,  by  its  very  nature,  it  must  discover  the  will 
of  the  nation  before  it  can  act.     A  deputy  is  thinking  less  of 

'      «  Barante,  I,  172. 
"  Ibid.,  1,  22. 
"  Ibid.,  1,  219. 
1*5  Barante,  II,  132. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        299 

the  governmental  decision  that  has  to  be  made  than  of  the 
verdict  that  will  be  passed  upon  his  decision  by  his  constituency 
at  the  next  election.  He  cannot  work  swiftly  and  silently. 
What  he  is  demands  at  once  deliberation  and  prominence.  But 
that  is  to  say  that  his  business  is  the  elaboration  of  general  prin- 
ciples which  is  in  no  sense  the  business  of  administration. 

Royer-Collard  is  naturally  led  to  examine  the  roots  whence 
this  theory  of  usurpation  takes  its  origin.  It  starts  out  from 
the  assumption  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people.  It  suggests 
that  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  as  the  representatives  of  the 
sovereign  people  is  the  recipient  by  delegation  of  their  sover- 
eignty. But  that  is  to  assume  the  identity  of  parliamentary 
government  with  representative  government  and  he  hotly 
denied  the  equation.^^  The  deputies  do  not  represent  the  na- 
tion. They  represent  the  interests  of  the  nation,  and  he  insists 
upon  the  vital  character  of  the  distinction."  Were  they  to 
represent  the  nation  no  form  of  government  save  a  republic 
would  be  possible.  To  represent  the  nation  is  to  represent  man, 
an  eager,  passionate  thinking  being,  who  possesses  in  himself 
an  atom  of  power.  But  you  cannot,  so  Royer-Collard  argues, 
delegate  that  power. ^^  It  rests  where  it  originates  and  each 
can  only  exert  it  for  himself.  Representative  government  is, 
he_sees  clearly  enough,  majority  government  and  power  goes 
to  the  party  whom  the  greater  part  of  the  citizen-body  sup- 
ports. But  that  is  already  direct  government  which  is  not  the 
government  of  France,  The  deputies  depend  for  their  exist- 
ence not  upon  the  people  but  upon  the  charter.^*  The  charter 
conferred  rights  upon  the  people  but  it  did  not  give  them  rep- 
resentation. What  it  did  was  to  create  a  body  of  men  who 
should  represent  in  the  constitution  of  the  state  the  divers 
interests  of  the  nation.  '  To  represent  the  historic  unity  of 
France  it  gave  the  government  to  the  King.  To  represent  the 
upper  classes  it  created  the  House  of  Peers.  -.But  from  each  oi 
these  there  is  a  distinct  interest — that  of  the  people  and  the 
charter  represented  that  interest  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, ^^ 

56  Ibid.,  I,  228. 

"  Ibid.,  I,  229. 

'^  This  is  the  whole  tenoiir  of  the  speeches  on  electoral  reform. 

5^  Barante,  II,  20. 

«» Ibid.,  I,  230. 


300        AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

It  was  careful  to  insist  upon  indirect  representation  for  the 
very  reason  that  it  is  from  the  charter  that  the  Chamber 
derives;  had  it  been  intended  to  create  representative  govern- 
ment only  universal  suffrage  would  have  been  logically  defen- 
sible.^^ In  such  an  analysis  the  chamber  is  simply  a  function 
of  the  state.  It  is  not  coeval  with  it.  It  cannot  pretend  to 
override  the  two  checks  upon  the  exercise  of  its  powers. 

For  Roycr-CoUard  saw  clearly  that  the  effort  of  the  popular 
chamber  was  aimed  at  the  possession  of  sovereignty.  If  that 
sovereignty  did  not  exist,  it  was  clear  enough  that  its  effort 
was  vain.  It  is  clear  that  it  was  not  intended  from  the  mere 
fact  that  there  are  two  chambers.  There  are  two  chambers 
because  there  are  two  interests  and  neither  of  them  can  uniquely 
be  sovereign.^2  jjg  emphasises  that  conclusion  the  more  ve- 
hemently because  of  every  aspirant  to  supreme  power  it  is  of 
parUament  that  he  is  most  suspicious.  It  hides  itself  behind 
its  corporate  personality  and  thus  lacks  the  responsibility  of 
actual  office. ^^  It  is  the  maker  of  laws  and  so  continually  en- 
croaching upon  authority  that  is  not  its  own  by  very  reason 
of  that  favourable  situation.  It  can  obtain  control  of  the 
executive,  as  it  can  break  the  independence  of  the  judicial 
power.  It  can  destroy  the  external  guarantees  of  freedom  by 
curbing  alike  thought  and  conscience.  That  is  why  limits 
have  been  placed  to  its  activity.  That  is  why,  for  example,  the 
charter  did  not  establish  single-chamber  government.  Had  it 
done  so,  it  might  equally  have  established  a  plebiscite.  But 
each  alike  is  the  manifestation  of  a  supposed  popular  sover- 
eignty and  of  its  existence  he  has  already  made  denial.  For 
whatever  sovereignty  we  recognise  is  a  depositary  of  force  and 
from  it  will  originate  law.  Since  his  effort  is  to  trace  the  origin 
of  law  to  a  reasonable  interpretation  of  conditions  in  the  light 
of  certain  fundamental  principles  of  justice,  it  is  obvious  that 
he  cannot  admit  that  conclusion. 

What  then,  he  asked  himself,  is  the  people?  He  had  no 
doubt  of  the  reply.  The  people,  like  the  King  and  like  the 
aristocracy,  is  simply  the  depositary  of  a  function  in  the  state.** 

"  Ibid.,  1,  222  f. 

«  Barante,  II,  18-20. 

«3  Ibid.,  1,  472. 

"  Barante,  I,  212. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        301 

It  has  to  set  a  limit  to  absolutism.  But  it  has,  simultaneously, 
to  be  prevented  from  usurping  that  power  which  it  has  itself 
come  to  limit.  That  is  why  it  is  counterbalanced  by  king  and 
nobles.  That  is  why  it  cannot  vote  at  pleasure  but  only  as  the 
fundamental  law  may  permit  it.^^  That  is  why  the  charter 
did  not  recognise  universal  suffrage.  That  is  why  the  chamber 
is  only  partly  renewed  at  a  general  election;  for  a  total  renewal 
would  be  a  plebiscite,  and  the  force  behind  a  plebiscite  would, 
whether  for  good  or  for  evil,  be  too  massive  to  make  effective 
resistance  possible.^^  It  would  then  engender  the  creation  of 
a  sovereignty,  and  in  that  creation  would  be  involved  the 
denial  of  the  charter.  It  would  be  an  ochlocracy  of  the  most 
dangerous  kind,  and  it  is  with  vehemence  that  he  repudiates 
its  consecration. 

IV.  IMPLICATIONS 

M.  Faguet  has  insisted  that  the  political  system  of  Royer- 
Collard  is  in  no  sense  a  metaphysic  and  there  is  certainly  a 
sense  in  which  this  is  entirely  true."  For  what  it  clearly  de- 
sires to  do  is  to  effect  the  canonization  of  one  fundamental 
truth  derived  from  his  own  experience.  He  had  learned  alike 
from  history  and  his  own  share  in  the  Revolution  that  the  use 
of  power  is  poisonous  to  those  who  exert  it.  That  for  which  he 
was  anxious  was  the  prevention  of  its  exertion  for  dangerous 
ends.  He  did  not  care  greatly  whether  the  wielder  of  it  were 
one  or  many.  What  he  desired  was  to  prevent  the  recurrence 
pT  a  time  when  the  personality  of  men  should  be  stifled  by  the 
authority  of  the  state.  That  does  not  mean  to  say  that  he  was 
in  any  sense  anarchistic  in  outlook.  Again  and  again  in  his 
career  he  accepted  the  necessity  of  repressive  legislation  when 
occasion  for  its  passage  seemed  to  him  evident.  But  for  the 
normal  state  he  was  clear  that  pohtical  life  would  be  intolerable 
unless  certain  limitations  of  power  were  postulated  as  funda- 
mental. The  individual  must  have  certain  liberties  no  matter 
what  inconvenience  may  flow  from  their  possession.     He  must 

^Ibid.,  211,  298. 

66 II,  32  f . 

"  Faguet,  op.  cit.,  I,  285. 


302  AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

have  certain  liberties  because  once  their  possession  is  denied 
the  result  is  either  Louis  XIV  or  the  Convention.  That  is  what 
he  meant  by  his  famous  doctrine  that  Hberties  are  the  capacities 
to  resist.*^  It  is  an  opportunity  to  deny  the  vaHdity  of  en- 
croachment. It  is  a  chance  to  insist  upon  the  submission  of 
any  given  situation  to  the  analysis  of  reason.  It  was,  on  the 
whole,  a  simple  and  practical  attitude,  intelligible  enough  when 
one  reads  it  in  the  light  of  his  time.  For  he  was  witnessing, 
after  all,  a  gigantic  struggle  between  two  parties  anxious  on 
the  one  hand  to  maintain,  on  the  other  to  destroy,  the  work 
of  the  Revolution.  He  saw  clearly  enough  that  their  collision 
must  inevitably  be  violent.  What  he  sought  to  outline  was  a 
Dolitical  method  under  which  an  orderly  progress  became  pos- 
sible. He  had  no  sympathy  for  those  who,  like  Villele,  regarded 
the  work  of  government  as  the  privileged  possession  of  king 
and  nobles.  His  defence  of  legitimacy  shows  how  little  he  ap- 
preciated the  spirit  of  democracy  in  his  time,  fiis  philosophy 
was  one  of  checks  and  balances,  derived,  perhaps,  from  an 
admiration  of  the  way  in  which  the  British  constitution  had 
preserved  the  equipoise  of  interests  without  a  revolution. 

Not  that  he  desired  to  see  France  governed  upon  the  English 
model.  Few  of  his  speeches  are  more  admirable  than  that  in 
which  he  insists  on  the  specialist  character  of  a  national  tradi- 
tion.^' France  cannot  import  the  English  constitution  simply 
because  she  is  France;  to  do  so  would  be  to  reverse  the  signifi- 
cance of  a  thousand  years  of  history.  His  mind  was  essentially 
compromising  in  its  outlook  and  the  rigidity  with  which  he  is 
usually  credited  comes  not  from  his  enunciation  of  a  system 
of  dogmas  as  from  his  constant  search  for  the  conditions  under 
which  a  compromise  may  be  effected.  When  there  was  hope 
of  a  moderate  liberalism  under  Decazes  he  did  not  object  to 
the  grant  of  extraordinary  powers;  it  was  under  the  oppressive 
absolutism  of  Charles  X  that  his  insistence  upon  the  value  of 
liberty  found  its  full  strength. 

The  influence  of  Montesquieu  upon  his  mind  is,  of  course, 
obvious  enough.  That  separation  of  powers  upon  which  the 
former  insisted  as  the  key  to  liberty  became  in  Royer-Collard's 

**  Cf.  Faguet,  op.  cit.,  I,  291. 
•■'9  Barante,  I,  216  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        303 

: 7)%^ 

hands  the  corner-stone  of  his  political  edifice^"     But  in  hisjl  ^ 

hands  it  also  underwent  a  vast  extension.  He  desired  not  so  7:rr-.a- 
much  the  separation  of  powers  as  the  separation  of  power. 
What  he  wanted  was  to  prevent  the  supreme  force  of  the 
state  from  being  concentrated  at  any  single  point  within  it. 
So  long  as  the  possibility  of  effective  resistance  had  to  be  con- 
sidered there  was  a  reasonable  certainty  that  power  would  not 
be  abused.  His  insistence  that  sovereignty  is  no  more  than 
a  peculiar  synthesis  of  power  is  immensely  valuable.  It  pre- 
vents the  attribution  to  the  state  of  any  mystical  rights  or 
functions.  He  saw  that  while  the  state  as  a  whole  has,  from 
the  nature  of  things,  the  theoretical  possession  of  all  power, 
actually  that  power  is  always  distributed  among  its  constituent 
elements.  The  sovereignty  of  the  state  then  comes  to  mean  in 
actual  practice  the  amount  of  power  that  is  exerted  by  the 
governing  body  of  the  state.  What  Royer-Collard  emphasised 
was  the  danger  of  permitting  that  power  to  become  so  great 
as  to  override  all  possible  expression  of  difference  within  the 
community.  What  you  have  to  do  is  not  to  strangle  opinion 
but  to  persuade  it.  Hence,  for  example,  his  postulation  of 
liberty  of  the  press  as  fundamental.  A  government  that  is 
continuously  subjected  to  the  raking  fire  of  criticism  is  in  fact 
a  limited  government;  it  cannot  become  a  despotism  save  by 
the  real  consent  of  its  subjects — which  is  to  say  that  it  cannot 
become  a  despotism.''^  :  For,  to  its  subjects,  two  appeals  are 
already  addressed  and  the  question  of  obedience  becomes  a 
problem  of  how  far  the  decision  of  authority  outweighs  in  the 
strength  of  its  appeal  the  moral  force  of  organized  opposition 
to  it. 

It  is  difficult  to  deny  the  validity  of  such  an  argument. 
The  separation  of  powers  is  admittedly  a  cumbersome  concep- 
tion. Translated  into  the  practical  expression  of  the  American 
Constitution  it  may  result,  as  an  acute  observer  has  emphasised, 
simply  in  the  confusion  of  powers.''^  But  that  is  simply  because 
in  its  orthodox  form  it  forces  a  natural  assumption  into  an  un- 
natural classification.    The  threefold  division  of  governmental 

"  Barante,  I,  207  f . 

"  Cf.  Barante,  II,  15  f. 

"  Cf.  Mr.  Lippmann's  remarks,  The  New  Republic,  Vol.  X,  p.  151. 


304        AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE 

power  into  executive,  legislative  and  judicial,  is  only  the  rough 
apportionment  of  convenience  and  does  not  exist  in  the  nature 

I  of  things.  Indeed  the  profoundest  student  of  the  American 
Constitution  has  recently  and  expressly  emphasised  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  logic  of  judicial  review  involves  ipso  facto  the  ex- 
ercise of  legislative  powerJ'  But  what  Royer-CoUard  saw 
clearly  is  that  our  inability  to  force  so  muddle-headed  a  classi- 
fication upon  government  is  not  equivalent  to  the  conference 
upon  it  of  absolutism.  What  on  the  contrary  it  suggests  is 
the  need  of  setting  limits  to  its  power  by  the  admission  that 
without  it  there  exist  rights  which,  on  occasion,  will  call  its 
activity  into  serious  question.  Admittedly  those  rights  are 
only  vaguely  defined.  Admittedly,  he  did  not  lay  down  the 
conditions  under  which  they  may  justifiably  be  exercised.'''* 
But  that  only  means  that  he  refused  to  prophecy  the  future. 
It  only  means  that  he  recognized  how  difficult  it  is  to  forecast 
the  precise  manner  in  which  events  will  shape  themselves. 
He  laid  down  the  general  principles  upon  which  the  conduct 

I  of  authority  must  be  judged  in  each  situation;  but  his  own 
career  as  a  member  of  the  chamber  revealed  how  clearly  he 
understood  the  compulsion  of  circumstance.  He  knew  that 
the  France  of  the  Restoration  must  confront  its  problems  dif- 
ferently from  the  France  of  1789.''^  The  exact  nuance  of  the 
change  he  dare  not  have  predicted.  What  he  saw  was  that 
so  long  as  the  existence  of  the  state  was  not  threatened  there 
must  be  an  eternal  conflict  between  its  constituent  parts. 
Events  have  not  thus  far  contradicted  the  general  correctness 
of  his  interpretation. 

In  such  an  analysis,  of  course,  the  conception  of  an  unitary 
state  must  disappear.  Where  there  is  sentient  existence,  there 
will  be  judgment;  wherever  there  is  personality  there  will  be 
power.  The  state  then  becomes  multicellular  in  character.  It 
develops  features  traditionally  associated  with  what  we  term 
federal  organisation.  The  vast  claims  of  legal  theory  for  any 
single  organ  of  the  state  begin  to  lose  their  substantiality. 
Not,  indeed,  that  they  lose  their  legal  correctness.     No  court 

"  See  the  dissent  of  Holmes,  J.  in  Southern  Pacific  v.  JenSen,  244  U.  S.  221. 

'<  Barantc,  II,  237,  309. 

"  This  is  indeed  the  whole  essence  of  the  Doctrinaires'  position. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        305 

will  question  the  legal  right  of  parliament  to  work  its  will  in 
whatever  way  may  to  itself  seem  most  necessary/"  Our  doubts 
of  its  authority  must  obtain  a  sanction  in  every  case  extra- 
judicial. Yet  it  is  surely  clear  that  a  theory  so  little  connected 
with  the  reality  of  political  life  is  unsatisfactory  enough. 
That  is  where  the  force  of  Royer-Collard's  analysis  becomes 
obvious.  The  rights  he  demanded  as  the  guarantee  against 
absolutism  are  rights  which,  sooner  or  later,  no  state  can 
afford  to  disregard.  He  may,  indeed,  have  been  vague  enough 
in  his  conception  of  liberty;  though  here  it  might  justly  be 
argued  that  those  who  have  been  most  precise  in  its  defini- 
tion have  usually  been  unable  to  make  their  concept  stand 
the  test  of  analysis.  The  simple  fact  is,  as  he  seems  to  have 
perceived,  that  liberty  is  less  a  tangible  substance  than  an 
atmosphere.''^  We  know  what  it  is  less  by  its  presence  than  by 
its  absence.  It  is  the  sense  of  a  cramped  personality,  the  arrest 
for  spiritual  development,  that  signifies  encroachment  upon  its 
necessities.  To  Royer-Collard  certain  rights  might  'be  defined 
which  would  prevent  the  onset  of  despotism.  He  defined  those 
rights;  and  their  fundamental  object  was  to  prevent  the  con- 
centration of  power  at  any  isolated  centre  of  the  state.  That, 
surely,  is  the  fundamental  characteristic  of  federal  government. 
He  insisted  upon  its  value  less  for  the  reasons  we  should 
today  assign  to  it  than  for  the  single  cause  that  it  prevented 
the  absolutist  tendency  of  government  to  have  its  sway.  But 
it  is  of  interest  to  note  that  the  milieu  in  which  he  sketched 
the  nature  of  power  should  have  swung  so  exactly  upon  the 
lines  he  suggested.  He  lived  in  a  period  of  developing  parlia- 
mentary power.  It  was  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  which  over- 
threw the  government  of  the  Restoration  just  as,  in  England, 
the  fortunes  of  the  ministry  depended  upon  the  goodwill  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  But  there  has  been  an  interesting 
divergence  at  this  point  between  the  experiences  of  France 
and  of  England.  Right  down  to  our  own  day  the  great  fact 
in  French  administrative  history  has  been  the  increasing  power 
of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies;  and  the  demand  for  administra- 

'^1.  e.     What    Professor  Dicey  calls  "legal  sovereignty;"    my  whole 
point  is  that  this  is  an  entirely  unnatural  conception  as  a  separate  fact. 
"  Cf .  the  eloquent  remarks  of  Mr.  Philipps,  "Europe  Unbound,"  Chap.  II. 


306        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

tive  autonomy  on  the  part  of  the  fonctionnaire  is  simply  the 
effort  to  restore  a  balance  of  power  that  has  been  regrettably 
lost  7*  The  instinct  of  tyranny  which  is  so  nourished  by  ac- 
quaintance with  power  has  led  in  France  to  an  impossible  situ- 
ation/^ Today,  as  a  consequence,  the  rights  that  the  civil 
servant  is  claiming  are  exactly  calculated  to  take  from  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies  all  power  save  that  regulation  by  the 
proclamation  of  general  principles  which,  fundamentally,  was 
Royer-Collard's  conception  of  its  function.^" 

In  England  the  evolution  has  been  in  an  almost  antithetic 
direction.  Where  Bagehot  could  note  the  overwhelming  su- 
premacy of  Parliament  the  fact  which  confronts  the  modern 
observer  is  the  even  greater  power  of  the  executive  body.^^ 
The  House  of  Commons  has  come  to  depend  upon  the  cabinet; 
and  as  yet,  at  any  rate,  we  have  discovered  no  means  of  re- 
storing an  effective  balance  of  power.  Yet  here,  too,  the  result 
has  been  exactly  what  one  who  accepts  the  general  analysis  for 
which  Royer-Collard  stood  sponsor  might  have  predicted. 
More  and  more  the  executive  organ  has  attempted  to  free  it- 
self from  the  trammels  of  the  rule  of  law.  The  development 
of  a  specialised  adininistrative  code  was  probably  inevitable; 
and  certainly  French  experience  suggests  that  its  growth  can 
well  harmonise  with  the  simultaneous  acceptance  of  the  idea 
of  responsibility.  The  fact  still  remains  that,  as  yet,  the  in- 
creasing power  of  the  bureaucratic  side  of  English  government 
has  not  brought  with  it  its  compensations  in  the  safeguarding 
of  general  liberty .^^  It  is  more  than  absurd  to  talk  thus  early 
of  a  transition  to  the  servile  state.  Yet  it  is  difficult  not  to 
analyse  the  latest  fruits  of  English  legislation  in  terms  of  a 
movement  from  contract  to  status.^^  Synchronously,  indeed, 
may  be  observed  the  appearance,  in  half-articulate  fashion  of 

"  Cf.  Lefas,  "L'Etat  et  les  Fonctionnaires." 

^^  As  is  admirably  pointed  out  by  M.  Leroyin  his  "Transformations  de 
puissance  publique." 

80  Barante,  II,  193  f. 

"  Cf.  Low,  "The  Governance  of  England,"  passim. 

82  Cf .  Dicey,  "The  Growth  of  Administrative  Law,"  in  the  Law  Quarterly 
Review  for  1916.  There  is  some  interesting  material  in  a  curious  volume 
by  E.  S.  P.  Haynes.    "The  Dechne  of  Liberty  in  England." 

"  Cf.  Pound  in  Harvard  Law  Review  for  January,  1917. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE        307 

the  attitude  which  the  French  call  solidarist — the  attempt  to 
interpret  poIiti(;al  life  in  terms  of  funation  instead  of  terms  of 
property.  The  growing  distrust  of  etatisme  is,  doubtless,  sig- 
nificant enough  in  this  regard;  and  it  is  worth  while  suggesting 
that  it  is  in  the  conception  of  a  fundamental  social  interde- 
pendence which  an  etatiste  regime  obscures  that  we  shall 
regain  the  synthesis  we  require.^* 

Nor  must  the  significant  moment  of  American  development 
be  disregarded.  Of  the  conflict  between  centraHsed  and  local 
authority  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  speak.  But  due  attention 
must  be  paid  by  any  observer  who  would  grasp  the  real  nature 
of  sovereignty  to  the  process  of  American  government  at  the 
present  time.  Observers  have  long  insisted  that  the  traditional 
institutions  of  1787  would  prove  unequal  to  the  strain  of  crisis; 
and  if  the  Civil  War  seemed,  in  some  degree,  to  negative  that 
conclusion,  it  is  emphatically  accurate  at  the  present  time. 
The  original  suspicion  of  executive  authority  threw  the  burden 
of  power  into  the  hands  of  Congress,  and  so  long  as  the  ordinary 
conception  of  representative  government  reflected  with  accuracy 
the  conditions  of  American  life,  the  emphasis  of  authority 
began  slowly  to  move  away  from  that  centre.  It  has  become 
commonplace  to  assert  that  the  President  is  today  more  powerful 
than  at  any  time  in  American  history.  It  is  still  more  obvious 
that  congressional  debate  has  largely  ceased  to  influence  the 
character  of  public  opinion.  New  instruments  of  opinion  are 
everywhere  in  the  making.  The  conventions  of  the  American 
Constitution  already  merit  examination.  New  administrative 
organs  are  already  in  process  of  construction.  Much  of  what 
has  come  into  being  has  no  popular  mandate  for  its  rulings; 
it  depends  on  what  seems  to  have  become  the  far  more  effective 
sanction  of  expert  confidence.  Congress,  it  is  clear,  would  be 
chary  enough  of  risking  a  total  coUision  with  its  opinions.  No 
one  can  estimate  the  future  of  these  novelties  except  to  feel 
dimly  but  decisively  that  they  have  a  future.  The  individual 
congressman  has  undergone  an  eclipse  as  complete  as  that  of 
the  private  member  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  Congres- 
sional committees  have  become  less  the  moulders  of  legislation 

^  Cf .  mylntroduction  to  Duguit's  "Transformations  du  Droit  Public"  in 
its  English  form  and  his  "Droit  Social,  Droit  Individuel." 


308        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

than  its  pathetic  because  grudging  recipients.  The  key  to  the 
whole  has  come  to  he  in  the  president's  hands  and  in  the  dis- 
cernment of  the  few  chosen  councillors  he  has  gathered  about 
him.  This  is  not,  it  is  clear,  the  government  envisaged  by  the 
constitution.  Equally  certainly,  it  is  not  a  government  which 
meets  with  the  approval  of  Congress.  In  some  sort  issue  has 
been  joined  between  the  two;  but  the  fact  that  it  is  already 
a  government  which  functions  suggests  the  inevitable  outcome.^^ 
Observation,  then,  seems  to  tend  in  the  direction  of  confirm- 
ing the  conclusion  at  which  Royer-Collard  arrived.  It  would 
seem  to  demonstrate  that  the  legal  theory  of  sovereignty  is 
without  roofin  actual  existence.  It  would  suggest  that  there 
exists  rather  a  broad  thing  we  call  power  and  that  sovereignty 
is  simply  its  exercise  in  actual  terms  of  life.  Sovereignty,  then, 
is  simply  an  act  of  will.  It  depends  upon  the  consent  of  the 
members  of  the  state  for  its  effectiveness.  Generally  speaking, 
what  decisions  the  organ  of  sovereignty  may  make  will  obtain 
acceptance;  and  Royer-Collard  most  certainly  would  not  have 
doubted  that  government  is  so  vital  a  thing  as  to  make  the 
refusal  of  obedience  the  extreme  marginal  case.  But  the  con- 
secration of  a  region  into  which  government  may  not  normally 
enter  is  the  guarantee  of  a  reservoir  of  resistance  which  con- 
firms his  theory  that  no  conception  of  power  is  adequate  into 
which  the  element  of  morality  does  not  enter;  and  that  is 
already  to  say  that  no  power  can  in  any  event  be  absolute.^^ 
What  we  do,  then,  is  to  remove  the  check  upon  the  exercise  of 
sovereignty  from  without  the  organ  which  exerts  it.  We  insist 
upon  the  externahty  of  the  individual.  We  make  of  him  a 
complete  personality  who,  while  he  is  a  member  of  the  state, 
and  thereby  contributes  to  the  justification  of  its  authority,  is, 
at  the  same  time,  something  more.  It  is  an  affirmation  of 
political  pluralism,  the  belief  that  while  the  state  is  responsible 
to  itself,  is  a  moral  being  from  which  self-judgment  is  expected, 
the  nature  of  power  demands  also  the  retention  of  the  safe- 
guard that  we,  too,  as  beings  with  personality,  are  compelled 

**  There  is  no  better  comment  on  this  change  than  Mr.  Croly's  articles 
in  The  New  Republic  from  April  to  September,  1917. 

*'  As  Lord  Bryce  has  noted,  Cf .  his  essays  on  "Obedience  and  Sovereignty" 
in  his  "Studios  in  History  and  Jurisprudence." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        309 

not  merely  to  passive  reaction  to  its  decisions  but  to  active 
registration  of  our  dissent  therefrom.  What,  of  course,  it  sug- 
gests is  a  type  of  government  very  different  from  anything  we 
have  thus  far  known.  If  the  spirit  of  decentrahsation  is  im- 
plicitly present  in  every  state,  it  would  seem  an  economy  of 
organisation  to  give  it  distinct  existence  in  form. 

That  problem,  indeed,  Royer-Collard  did  not  face,  for  the 
sufficiently  good  reason  that  he  was  not  confronted  by  it. 
Those  who  occupied  themselves  with  the  politics  of  the  Restora- 
tion had  a  different  task  from  our  own.  The  nations  of  Europe 
had  made  holy  alliance  against  democratic  principles  and  the 
main  problem  for  all  who  recognised,  as  did  Royer-Collard, 
that  the  basic  demand  of  the  Revolution  was  right,  were  occu- 
pied in  the  affirmation  of  it.  That  involved  a  different  and 
simpler  struggle  from  our  own.  The  distinction  between  the 
ancien  regime  and  the  Revolution  was,  after  all,  clear  even  to 
the  least  acute  spectator  of  events.  The  whole  problem  was 
simply  whether  the  basis  of  government  should  be  the  will  of 
one  or  a  generaUsed  representation  of  the  will  of  all.  The 
Restoration  answered  that  question  in  two  antithetic  ways. 
The  Royalists  proclaimed  loudly  that  the  intellectual  teachings 
of  the  Revolution  had  produced  such  disastrous  results  as  to 
be  inacceptable  to  honest  men.  They  desired  for  that  cause 
the  return  to  the  conception  of  power  by  which  the  ancien 
-regime  had  been  governed.  Those  who  may  broadly  be  termed 
liberal  in  outlook  suggested  what  was  in  effect  a  compromise. 
While  they  distrusted  the  dogmas  of  royalism  they  were  a  little 
sceptical  of  the  full  and  logic  consequences  of  its  negation. 
What  they  sought  was  the  synthesis  of  the  potentialities  of 
both;  and  it  was  by  the  fimitation  of  authority  in  the  recogni- 
tion of  individual  rights  that  are,  generally  speaking,  inviolable, 
that  they  sought  to  effect  it.  The  solution,  of  course,  was  too 
simple.  The  ancient  institutions  of  France  could  not  be  at 
once  idealised  and  modernised.  The  practical  defect  of  Royer- 
Collard's  own  outlook  was  that  he  did  not  take  sufficient 
account  of  the  legacies  of  hatred  that  had  been  inherited.  His 
own  confidence  in  the  charter  was  pathetically  unique.  To 
Charles  X  it  was  a  subject  of  abhorrence;  to  Barante  it  was 


310        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

useless  because  it  was  operated  without  good  Avill  f  to  Chateau- 
briand it  was  merely  the  material  for  an  elegant,  if  capricious, 
pamphlet.^  The  charter  did  not,  as  Royer-Collard  had  hoped, 
reconcile  the  institutions  it  had  established;  it  merely  provided 
a  basis  for  their  more  violent  division.  The  fact  was  that  it 
sought  the  unification  of  two  permanently  irreconcilable  prin- 
ciples— an  active  monarchy  and  a  democracy.  Until  the  tri- 
umph of  the  one  or  the  other  had  been  secured,  their  collision 
was  unavoidable. 

V.    ETHICS  AND  POLITICS 

If  the  main  motive  of  this  outlook  is  the  effort  to  solve  a  fairly 
definite  and  practical  problem,  the  answer  has  an  ethical  impli- 
cation which  it  is  worth  while  for  a  moment  to  examine.  Roj^er- 
Collard  was  the  philosophic  disciple  of  Reid,^^  and,  like  the 
latter,  his  metaphysical  work  was  really  an  attempt  to  find 
means  of  escape  from  the  scepticism  of  Hume.  That  lo  which 
his  analysis  led  him  was  an  insistence  on  the  worth  of  conscience. 
Few  theorists  of  his  time  have  so  greatly  emphasised  the  im- 
portance of  what  contribution  each  individual  can  make  to  the 
general  fabric  of  state-thought.  He  had  reahsed  that  the  in- 
sistence the  Revolution  had  laid  upon  the  worth  of  human 
personality  was  in  some  sort  its  most  vital  work.  For  it  im- 
mediately involves  on  the  part  of  the  state  an  effort  to  organise 
means  whereby  that  personality  may  obtain  expression.  Here, 
clearly  enough,  emerges  the  real  significance  of  the  connotation 
he  attached  to  freedom.  Liberty,  for  him,  is  the  hindrance  of 
attack  upon  the  development  of  personality.  That  is  why  he 
IS  so  anxious  to  put  beyond  the  area  of  ordinary  interference 
certain  rights  without  which  personality  is  worthless.  That 
was  why,  also,  he  was  suspicious  of  authority.  For  where 
authority  encroaches  beyond  the  domain  that  circumstance 
will,  in  a  rational  analysis,  ascribe  to  it,  it  negatives  the  mean- 
ing  of  personality.     That  was  the  defect  of  the  ancien  regime. 

8'  "M6moires,"  II,  180. 

88  "La  Monarchic  Selonla  Charte."  For  the  circumstances  of  its  origin 
cf.  Daudet,  "  Louis  XVIII  ct  Decazes,"  pp.  153-5,  169-70.  Viel  Castel, 
"Histoirc,"  Vol.  V,  pp.  240-53. 

8«  Barante,  II,  70  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        311 

It  confined  humanity  within  certain  bounds  and  the  richness 
of  which  it  was  capable  failed  to  obtain  adequate  recognition. 
Of  course  Royer-CoUard  had  here  the  defects  of  his  time. 
His  perception  of  the  value  of  the  individual  conscience  did  not 
go  far  enough  to  make  him  see  the  necessity  of  universalising 
its  political  expression.  He  was  so  wrapped  up  in  his  doctrine 
that  what  obtains  representation  is  not  will  but  interests  that 
he  failed  to  realise  that  interests  are  no  more  than  the  material 
expression  of  will.  He  did  not  push  far  enough  his  analysis  of 
the  basis  of  the  state.  Had  he  done  so  he  would  have  grasped 
firmly  what,  in  fact  he  only  dimly  perceiyed ;  that  it  is  in  actual 
life  impossible  to  test  the  legitimacy  of  a  will  that  clamors  for 
expression  merely  by  the  discussion  of  its  origin.^"  His  own 
theory,  indeed,  was  one  of  function;  and  he  satisfied  himself 
that  the  interests  of  the  French  people  were  sufficiently  ex- 
pressed in  the  power  of  the  middle  classes  to  which  he  himself 
belonged.  The  day  of  the  workers  had  not  yet  dawned;  and 
the  attempt  to  explain  the  economic  significance  of  class-dis- 
tinction certain  English  thinkers  had  only  begun  to  attempt. 
It  is,  of  course,  an  inconsistency  in  his  thought  to  have  stopped 
at  a  point  where  the  conference  of  political  power  would  then 
have  prevented  the  violence  he  hated  so  passionately.  But 
his  thought  was  always  limited  by  the  necessities  he  encount- 
ered; and  he  did  not  pursue  its  implications  into  the  realm  of 
abstract  possibility. 

Whatever  that  limitation,  his  insistence  on  the  value  of  per- 
sonaHty  as  the  real  source  of  political  power  is  very  important. 
It  is  difficult  not  to  feel  that  it  is  derived,  above  all,  from 
Kant.  Henri  Michel  has  pointed  out  how  greatly  Guizot,  at 
any  rate,  was  influenced  by  the  German  speculation  of  his 
time;^^  and  what  influenced  Guizot  would  not  have  been  un- 
known to  Royer-Collard.  His  own  spiritualist  philosophy  led 
him  to  attach  great  weight  to  the  idea  of  the  soul;  and  he 
realised  early  that  it  is  an  attitude  favorable  to  liberty .^^  If,  as 
he  was  never  weary  of  insisting,  man  alone,  of  all  creatures,  is 
given  the  faculty  of  judgment,  no  state  can  be  adequate  in 

'°  This,  I  think,  is  the  real  defect  of  his  interpretation  of  the  charter. 
91  Op.  cit.,  298. 
.  92  Ferraz,  "Histoire  de  hi  Philosophie,"  III,  157. 


312        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

which  provision  is  not  made  for  its  exercise.^^  Indeed,  it  is  that 
faculty  of  judgment  which  in  fact  hes  at  the  basis  of  society. 
What  it  demands  is  the  recognition  that  certain  ideal  rights 
,  are  inherent  in  the  fact  of  individual  existence.  The  self  can- 
■/  not  be  itself  unless  it  is  given  material  upon  which  to  pass 
judgment.  But  the  provision  of  that  material  is  already  the 
recognition  of  liberty  of  conscience.  It  involves  the  conception 
of  a  personahty  that  is  more  than  the  sum  of  its  relations. 
It  is  not,  of  course,  in  any  sense  a  legal  conception.  That 
which,  in  any  state,  is  the  accepted  organ  of  ultimate  power 
may  refuse  the  recognition  in  its  code  of  such  rights.  But 
there  is  set  alongside  the  legal  conception  of  right  a  moral 
claim  of  which  it  is  difficult  to  make  denial  of  the  inherent 
superiority.  Actual  law  and  ideal  law  may  never  coincide; 
but  where  they  come  into  conflict  there  can  hardly  be  doubt 
as  to  where  the  ultimate  allegiance  is  due.  But  such  an  analy- 
sis must  surely  mean  that  the  claim  of  the  state  upon  us  is 
emphatically  subjective,  depends,  for  its  validity,  upon  the 
moral  appeal  it  makes  to  our  conscience.  Where  its  policy  seems 
to  step  beyond  right,  it  becomes,  as  Royer-Collard  realised  in 
1830,  a  moral  duty  to  warn  those  who  are  exercising  its  control, 
that  the  acquiescence  of  its  constituent  wills  has  become  at 
least  matter  of  doubt.^"*  And,  in  the  last  resort,  the  refusal  of 
obedience  is  inevitable.  That  refusal,  indeed,  may  involve  pain 
to  him  who  thus  makes  his  challenge;  and,  indeed,  as  Mr. 
Barker  has  argued,"^  it  may  well  be  that  the  presumption  is 
against  us. 

Yet  the  duty  surely  remains.  There  are  few  rights  more 
precious  than  the  right  to  be  wrong.  For  once  we  accept  the 
idea  of  the  state  as  not  merely  the  whole  of  ourselves,  but 
a  thing  without  us  of  which  we  are  compelled  to  take  ceaseless 
account,  it  is  clear  that  we  can  accept  no  doctrine  that  would 
derive  our  rights  from  the  state  and  condition  than  by  the 
decisions  of  its  will.  That  is,  in  fact,  to  postulate  for  the  state 
a  kind  of  cc^ntralised  infallibility  of  which  ^ve  have  thus  far 

»3  Barante,  II,  293. 
»^  Cf.  Barante,  II,  419. 

"''  "English  Political  Thought,"  p.  GO.  Tlio  wholo  chapter  is  immensely 
valuable. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        313 

had  no  experience.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  its  decisions 
as  having  in  any  sense  "a  final  moral  value,"  for  that  is  to 
confer  upon  ourselves  too  vast  a  relief  from  thought.  Here, 
surely,  is  the  real  meaning  of  the  new  form  given  by  Kant 
to  the  fundamental  principle  of  law.^^  Before  his  time  law 
had  attempted  no  more  than  the  preservation  of  order.  The 
condition  of  society  had  rendered  peace  the  vital  social  in- 
terest. Dissent  then  clearly  becomes  an  attitude  contrary  to 
law;  for  dissent  is  nothing  if  it  is  not  the  disturbance  of  peace. 
So  there  comes  a  strife  between  the  interest  of  the  individual 
who  would  make  his  protest  and  that  of  the  state  which  would 
prevent  him.  What  Kant  did  was  to  insist  that  the  problem 
we  have  to  solve  is  the  reconciliation  of  government  with 
liberty.  Justice,  for  him,  was  simply  the  opportunity  for  the 
good- will  to  obtain  its  fullest  development  in  action;  and  he 
sought  to  find  wherein  the  balance  of  individual  interest  and 
social  interest  might  be  discovered.  Our  own  problem  is  in 
nowise  different.  If  our  greatest  need  is,  at  the  moment,  or- 
ganisation, that  does  not  in  any  sense  lessen,  rather  does  it 
increase,  the  value  of  individual  responsibility.^^  A  state  in 
which  the  liability  of  its  members  is  shifted  to  the  shoulders 
of  government  is  not  likely  long  to  remain  free.  Organization 
may,  indeed,  leave  room  for  initiative;  but  the  very  condition 
of  its  preservation  is  in  the  understanding  of  individualism. 
It  would,  indeed,  be  a  simple  world  if  all  of  us  could  be  swept 
into  the  vortex  of  an  all-embracing  personality  likt>  the  state. 
But  a  truer  analysis  seems  to  suggest  that,  as  James  said, 
"every  smallest  bit  of  experience  is  a  multum  in  parvo  plurally 
related. "^^  Because  experience  is  many  and  not  one  the  indi- 
vidual personality  can  not  engulf  itself  in  a  single  expression 
of  one  of  its  aspects.  When,  that  is  to  say,  you  have  described 
man  as  a  member  of  the  state  you  have  not  exhausted  his 
nature.  He  refuses  that  reduction  to  unity.  He  refuses  it  for 
the  simple  reason  that  it  does  not  represent  the  facts.  He  is 
not  merely  a  member  of  the  state.    His  capacity  for  fellowship 

96  Cf .  Janet,  "Science  Politique,"  II,  576  f. 

9^  Cf.  the  suggestive  paper  of  Dean  Pound  in  the  American  Journal  oj 
Sociology  for  May,  1917. 

»8  "A  Pluralistic  Universe,"  p.  321. 


314        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

is  not  so  meagrely  exhausted.  Above  all,  there  are  moments 
when  the  Athanasius  element  in  his  nature  must  have  its  way. 
But  that  is  to  admit  already  breakage  and  ignorance  in  the 
world,  to  postulate  a  discontinuity  which  impels  decision  as  to 
where  the  leap  shall  be  taken. 

Here,  surely^  is  the  moral  background  of  the  liberty  that 
Royer-Collard  envisaged.  It  is  the  one  certain  guarantee 
against  absolutism.  It  denies  perfection  by  the  very  fact  of  its 
insistence  that  the  object  of  individual  judgment  is  to  secure 
moral  progress.  It  does  not  deny  personahty  to  the  state.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  the  ascription  of  moral  purpose  to  the  state 
which  it  deduces  from  the  fact  of  personality.  But  it  realises 
that,  like  the  individual,  the  will  of  the  state  is  not  a  simple 
effort  after  good.  It  would,  perhaps,  be  simple  if  we  could  base 
our  activity  upon  such  an  analysis.  But  the  will  of  any  being 
may  be  perverted  to  wrong  ends;  and  exactly  as  the  state  will 
judge  us  for  the  use  we  make  of  our  personality,  so,  reciprocally, 
we  must  judge  the  state.  For,  after  all,  our  own  will  is  swept 
into  the  strength  of  its  decisions;  and  where  w^e  deem  it  wrong 
only  the  active  registration  of  dissent  can  excuse  us  from  par- 
ticipation in  its  crimes.  Royer-Collard  had  experience  enough 
of  a  state  that  wrought  its  own  purposes  without  the  hindrance 
of  dissent.  He  realised  the  uselessness  of  any  doctrine  that, 
merely  for  the  sake  of  survival,  would  confuse  pacific  conduct 
with  good  conduct.  It  is,  indeed,  clear  that  a  state  in  which  the 
only  effective  will  is  that  which  at  the  moment  of  expression 
has  to  be  taken  for  the  general  will  can  never  be  a  democratic 
state.  For  the  very  condition  of  democratic  organisation  hes  in 
the  realisation  that  self-government  means  something  more 
than  to  contribute  one's  mite  of  personal  agreement  to  the  vast 
whole  of  which  one  is  part,  and,  in  this  aspect,  it  is  surely 
significant  of  much  that  what  time  the  democratic  state  seemed 
to  waste  in  the  effort  to  attain  unity  of  action  in  fact  gave  to 
that  action  a  moral  strength  denied  to  unthinking  acquiescence.^^ 

But,  in  such  a  conception,  it  is  clear  that  the  object  we  ascribe 
to  the  state  is  something  more  than  survival.  It  is  to  that  end 
only  that  acquiescence  is  directed.    A  freedom  of  conscientious 

'^  Even  the  most  zealous  advocates  of  state-unity  seem  to  have  admitted 
this,  cf.  London  Times,  May  17,  1917,  p.  231. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        315 

objection  such  as  Poland  knew,  may  have  been  the  inevitable 
precursor  of  partition.  We  may  have,  as  Royer-Collard  reahsed, 
to  sacrifice  the  rigidity  of  our  theory  to  the  changing  perspective 
of  e vents. ^°°  But  that  simply  involves  our  realisation  that  the 
cost  of  survival  may  be  too  great;  to  perish,  as  he  once  bitterly 
remarked, ^°^  may  also  be  a  solution.  A  state  may,  as  Machiavelli 
said,  go  to  work  against  good  and  charity,  but  assuredly  the 
result  of  its  effort  will  be  written  deeply  in  the  life  it  will  thence- 
forth lead.  That  was  the  point  of  Huxley's  oft-misinterpreted 
dictum  that  the  cosmic  process  is  opposed  to  the  ethical.  For 
all  that  the  state  is  primarily  concerned  to  do  is  to  secure  sur- 
vival and  that  means  fitting  its  methods  to  a  non-moral  end. 
But  if  the  environment  be  bad,  the  ethical  process  suffers  as  a 
consequence.  In  a  world  of  murderers  the  survival  of  any  one 
man  does  not  guarantee  an  ethical  superiority.  That  was  surely 
the  meaning  of  Aristotle's  distinction  between  the  good  man 
and  the  good  citizen.  Herr  von  Bethmann-Hollweg  may  have 
saved  his  state  when  he  agreed  to  hack  his  way  through  Belgium; 
but  he  himself  admitted  that  it  was  a  crime.  The  state  was 
working  its  end  through  him;  but  most  of  us  are  agreed  that  its 
end  was  not  a  moral  end.  It  is  interesting  to  speculate  as  to  our 
judgment  of  one  who,  in  such  a  crisis,  should  fearlessly  challenge 
the  state-decision.  In  our  own  time,  certainly,  it  seems  to  have 
profited  it  but  little  to  aim  at  the  conquest  of  the  world  at  the 
cost  of  its  soul. 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  ethic  of  the  state  must  be  dis- 
tinct from  that  of  the  individual.  Anyone  who  studies  the 
historical  consequence  of  such  a  difference  will  be  convinced  of 
its  impossibility.  Itjneans  rather  that  we  must  reject  the  test 
of  state-life  which  insists  on  its  quantitative  expansion  and  look 
rather  to  its  qualitative  intensity.  In  that  aspect  we  are  com- 
pelled to  stand  outside  the  state  and  judge  it.  There  will  come 
to  us  clearly  the  knowledge  that  there  is  an  end  greater  than  its 
survival  and  perpetuation.  Most  of  us  would  rather  have 
perished  with  Leonidas  at  Thermopylae  than  have  survived  with 
the  Persian  tyrant;   but  Persia  survived.    Was  the  end  its  sur- 

"o  Barante,  I,  302. 

"'  The  dilemma  is  in  reality  worth  more  consideration  than  is  usually 
given  to  it ;   but  the  instinct  of  state-life  is  very  strong. 


316        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

vival  served  more  ethical  than  the  end  that  would  have  been 
served  by  its  downfall?  Most  of  us  would  doubt  it.  And  it 
then  becomes  surely  arguable  that  one  of  the  results  of  recent 
evolution  has  been  to  make  the  individual  bi-partite — no  less 
himself  an  end  than  contributory  to  the  end  of  the  state.  The 
test  of  value  in  an  institution  may  be  rather  its  advantage  to 
the  state  than  to  the  individual,  but  who  is  to  judge  its  value  if 
not  ourselves?^''^  An  individual  may  decide  on  a  course  which 
enables  justice  to  be  done  even  though  the  state  perish  in  the 
doing  of  it.  From  the  standpoint  of  survival  that  may  not  serve 
the  state.  But  that  only  leads  to  the  insistence  that  even  if  the 
ethical  process  be  the  derivative  of  the  cosmic  it  is  not  one  with 
it,  any  more  than  a  man  is  one  with  the  father  from  whom  he  de- 
rives. "The  simple  truth  has  to  be  told,"  says  Meredith  of 
Nevil  Beauchamp,  "how  he  loved  his  country,  and  for  another 
and  a  broader  love  growing  out  of  his  first  passion,  fought  it." 
It  is  at  least  a  conceivable  attitude,  even  if  it  is  rare.  Un- 
deniably, of  course,  it  is  an  attitude  fraught  with  elements  of 
danger  to  the  body  politic.  The  state-life  cannot  be  lived  if  its 
members  may  make  rebelHon  against  its  authority.  But  the 
rarity  of  their  dissent  is  a  factor  of  vital  consequence.  No  one 
could  have  predicted  that  the  Royer-Collard  of  1814  would,  in 
1830,  have  acquiesced  in  the  overthrow  of  legitimism;  yet  the 
sequence  of  events  drove  him  to  an  opposition  upon  wliich  he 
entered  with  grave  distrust.^°^  The  fact  is  that  the  business  of 
the  state  is  the  service  of  men,  and  where  her  defection  from  that 
course  imperils  the  rightness  of  her  conduct  somewhere  or  other 
the  protest  will  be  made.  And  it  may  then  be  urged  that  a  state 
which  is  in  fear  of  revolution  by  reason  of  its  policy  is  less  Ukely 
to  be  wrong  than  a  state  whose  citizens  have  ceased  to  aim  their 
consciences  against  it.  Ambition,  tyranny,  selfishness,  these 
men  will  fight  in  whatever  guise  they  may  be  discovered;  and 
it  is  in  their  willingness  so  to  do  battle  that  the  real  safeguard  of 
morals  is  to  be  found.  A  conception  of  the  relationship  between 
rulers  and  ruled  which  does  not  include  the  possibility  of 

1°^  This,  as  I  conceive,  is  the  real  defect  of  such  idealistic  interpretations 
of  the  state  as  that  of  Mr.  Bosanquet.  Cf.  the  first  chapter  of  this  volume 
and  the  first  essay  in  my  "Problem  of  Soveroisnty." 

'"'Cf.  Barante,  II,  .34  f. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        317 

renouncing  the  relation  is  always  incomplete;  for  it  is  demanding 
a  measure  of  loyalty  and  unselfishness  from  subjects  far  greater 
than  is  sought  from  their  governor. 

The  difficulty  of  anarchy  must,  of  course,  be  faced  ;^°*  and  no 
consideration  of  politics  would  be  adequate  which  failed  to  take 
account  of  its  dangers.  No  one  was  more  convinced  then  Royer- 
Collard  that  government  is  necessary;  no  one,  assuredly,  would 
have  more  willinging  admitted  the  vastness  of  the  problem.  If 
Luther  may  take  upon  himself  the  purgation  of  the  world- 
church,  how  shall  she  retain  the  splendor  of  her  empire?  Yet 
the  problem  is,  in  fact  less  simple.  It  is  important  to  remember 
that  creative  opposition  has  come,  less  from  those  either  fatally 
certain  of  their  opinion,  or  eager  to  play  the  martyr,  than  from 
those  who,  with  Luther,  can  simply  retort  that  they  cannot  do 
otherwise.  Yet  such  wholehearted  antagonism  will  not  come  to  a 
state  which  seeks  the  path  of  justice.  It  is  when  a  fundamental 
choice  must  be  made  between  right  and  wrong  that  men  like 
Luther  grow  daring  enough  to  shake  the  world.  It  is  when,  as  in 
1830,  warning  has  been  neglected  and  principle  trampled  under- 
foot that  men  like  Royer-Collard,  fitted  by  nature  for  the  part  of 
order  rather  than  that  of  change,  will  be  content  to  remake  the 
institutions  of  the  state.  The  danger  of  anarchy  intervenes 
when  wrong  has  become  unendurable.  It  remains  where  the 
path  of  right  conduct  is  yet  uncertain.  It  is  useless  to  hope  that 
such  moments  will  never  come.  None  can  say  where  the  su- 
preme twinge  of  conscience  may  be  felt.  A  supreme  issue  may 
be  clothed  in  the  garb  of  an  army-officer  accused  of  espionage  ;^°^ 
it  may  be  found  in  the  exaction  of  an  educational  tax.  Yet  few 
can  read  thQ  long  history  of  protest  against  state-policy  without 
feehng  that,  on  the  whole,  the  fact  of  its  existence  has  been  pro- 
ductive of  good.  The  Lamennais  of  the  nineteenth  century  may 
vainly  choose  the  path  of  exile ;  but  he  will  inspire  the  victorious 
Lamennais  df  a  later  age  as  he  will  instruct  the  institution  which 
cast  him  forth.  Great  events  such  as  this  become  so  intimate 
and  vital  a  part  of  the  state-tradition  that  none  can  measure  the 
efficacy  of  their  result.    We  shall  not  write  in  the  future  the  his- 

^^  This  is  the  difiBculty  felt  by  my  able  reviewer  in  the  Times  Literary 
Supplement,  May  17,  1917. 
"*  Cf .  Hal6vy,  ".\pologie  pour  notre  passe"  (1910). 


318        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

tory  of  a  second  Galileo.  The  state,  no  less  than  the  church, 
must  learn  that  is  not  paramount  in  the  realm  of  ideas.  Few 
things  are  more  fatal  than  the  triumph  of  authority  over 
truth.106 

The  great  fact  that  Royer-Collard  perceived  was  that  in  the 
denial  of  infallibility  to  authority  we  may  prevent  that  disas- 
trous victory. ^°^  When  we  insist  that,  in  the  last  analysis,  only 
the  individual  is  sovereign  over  himself,  we  make  it  possible  for 
him  to  contribute  his  best  to  the  sum  of  social  life.  But  his  best, 
assuredly,  is  not  blind  obedience.  His  best  is  the  utmost  insight 
of  which  his  judgment  is  capable.  Compared  to  that,  the  chance 
of  disorder  is  relatively  unimportant.  For  the  probability  is 
that  a  view  which  men  will  so  embrace  as  to  ask  the  final  test 
of  its  survival  is  a  view  that  responds  to  some  inherent  need  of 
nature.  Christianity,  in  its  early  history,  was  exactly  a  danger 
of  this  kind  to  the  empire  it  was  slowly  permeating.  The  christ- 
ian had  choice  between  his  civic  obedience  and  his  religious 
loyalty.  He  saw,  on  the  one  hand,  the  vast  authority  of  an 
empire  so  great  that  its  very  limits  were  hardly  conceivable  by 
him.  He  saw  on  the  other  a  httle  fellowship  of  souls  driven  un- 
derground, testifying  its  faith  only  at  the  cost  of  suffering,  sus- 
pected on  all  sides  of  crimes  the  mere  thought  of  which  was  a 
stain  upon  their  reputation  and  their  opinions.  In  the  perspec- 
tive of  time  the  weight  of  authority  as  against  what  the  christian 
deemed  to  have  been  truth  seems  almost  unutterably  large;  to 
have  cast  his  handful  of  incense  was  so  pitifully  easy  a  thing. 
Yet,  also  in  the  perspective  of  time,  it  is  impossible  to  doubt 
that  the  christian  did  service  to  civilisation  when  he  counted  the 
empire  of  authority  without  meaning  as  against  the  empire  of 
what  to  him  was  truth.  "The  worth  of  a  state,"  Mill  finely 
said,^°^  "in  the  long  run  is  the  worth  of  the  individuals  compos- 
ing it;  and  a  state  which  postpones  the  interests  of  their  mental 
expansion  and  elevation  to  a  little  more  administrative  skill,  or 
of  that  semblance  of  it  which  practice  of  it  gives,  in  the  details 
of  business;  a  state  which  dwarfs  its  men,  in  order  that  they  may 

""  As  Larheiinais  and  Tyrrell  saw  in  their  sphere. 

'"^  This  is  the  whole  point  of  Lord    Acton's  fine  protest.     "History  of 
Freedom,"  p.  151. 
106  "Liberty"  (Everyman's  ed.),  p.  170. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        319 

be  more  docile  instruments  in  its  hands  even  for  beneficial  pur-  ( 
poses,  will  find  that  with  small  men  no  great  thing  can  really  be 
accomplished;  and  that  the  perfection  of  machinery  to  which' 
it  has  sacrificed  everything  will  in  the  end  avail  it  nothing,  for 
want  of  the  vital  power  which,  in  order  that  the  machine  might 
work  more  smoothly,  it  has  preferred  to  banish." 

We  dare  not,  in  brief,  surrender  the  individual  conscience. 
Only  upon  its  continuous  exercise  can  our  state  be  securely 
founded.  Only  therein  can  we  discover  the  essential  compromise 
between  fundamental  principles  which  is  the  real  nature  of  pub- 
lic policy.  Here,  surely,  lies  the  greatness  of  Royer-Collard's 
doctrine.  For  he  came  to  importance  in  public  life  at  a  time 
when  two  antithetic  systems  of  political  organisation  stood  face 
to  face.  He  was  able  to  understand  that  neither  was  of  itself 
strong  enough  to  triumph.  He  was  quick  to  perceive  that  the 
unlimited  victory  of  either  would  be  in  no  sense  an  unmitigated 
benefit.  He  opposed  the  theory  of  the  royalists  because  it  made 
the  state  the  privileged  possession  of  a  single  interest.  He  op- 
posed the  theory  of  democracy  because,  as  he  conceived,  France 
was  not  ready  to  accept  pretensions  alien  to  what  had  thus  far 
been  the  historic  system  of  her  institutions.  But  in  each  he  per- 
ceived a  truth  which  might,  in  combination,  work  for  good.  The 
value  of  royalism  lay  in  its  insistence  upon  continuity.  Royer- 
Collard  himself  admitted  that  no  rational  interpretation  of 
national  existence  can  ever  be  catastrophic  and  he  accepted  the 
fact  of  monarchy  as  the  basis  of  the  state.  But  he  simultan- 
eously realised  that  the  danger  of  monarchical  government  lies 
in  its  natural  tendency  to  absolution.  The  apocryphal  equation 
of  Louis  XIV  had  become  already  an  anachronism.  What  was 
needed  was  the  impetus  of  a  doctrine  which  should  take  account 
of  the  personality  of  each  member  of  the  state,  and  give  to  that 
personality  the  opportunity  for  self-expression.  He  saw  that  so 
limited,  no  monarch  can  aim  at  absolute  power  without  invoking 
disaster.  Yet  he  saw,  too,  that  a  personality  of  which  the 
exercise  was  at  every  stage  limited  by  the  will  of  the  state  was 
in  no  real  sense  capable  of  activity.  So  it  was  that  while  he 
admitted  that  the  idea  of  national  survival  was  fundamental, 
he  insisted  also  that  the  individual  by  reason  of  his  humanity 
has  certain  rights  no  state  may  contravene.    He  defined  those 


320        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN'STATE 

rights;  and  he  pointed  out  wherein  they  tend  to  the  guarantee  of 
hberty.    It  was  a  noble  effort  nobly  sustained. 

That  it  had  defects  and  inconsistencies  is  undeniable.  It  is 
too  often  the  speculation  rather  of  an  orator  than  of  a  philos- 
opher. It  is  the  speculation  of  a  man  of  affairs  in  that  it  limited 
itself  to  the  analysis  of  situations  which  actually  confronted  the 
chamber  of  Deputies.  It  is  a  system  rather  by  impHcation  than 
by  statement.  It  had  not  the  coherent  prevision  of  the  possibil- 
ities of  labour,  or,  if  it  suspected  its  advent,  it  was  curiously  sus- 
picious of  the  result.  It  tended  too  often  to  express  itself  in  terms 
of  a  mathematical  balance  from  which  the  facts  are  in  the  real  life 
remote.  But  it  remains,  even  when  these  defects  have  been 
noted,  a  constructive  advance  upon  the  ideas  of  his  age.  It  is 
not  a  mere  collection  of  unreasoned  prejudices  like  the  attitude 
of  Villele;  it  is  more  than  the  uncritical  opportunism  of  Guizot. 
It  was  based  upon  an  immense  experience,  and  it  was  an  experi- 
ence that  had  been  deeply  felt  and  carefully  understood.  It  was 
an  experience  which  taught  him  that  however  valuable  may  be 
the  benefits  of  order,  they  are  useless  so  long  as  they  stifle  the 
spontaneity  of  the  human  mind.  It  led  him  to  insist  that  tradi- 
tion is  of  today  as  well  as  of  the  centuries  that  are  past.  He  tried 
to  free  a  generation  that  had  suffered  from  the  ills  that  had  been 
inherited.  He  sketched  the  foundations  of  a  state  that  should 
base  its  order  upon  freedom.  There  are  few  higher  claims  to  the 
enduring  gratitude  of  men. 


CHAPTER   FIVE 

ADMINISTRATIVE  SYNDICALISM  IN  FRANCE' 

I.  THE  RIGHT  OF  ASSOCIATION 

FRENCH  tradition  has  not  been  favourable  to  the  growth 
of  associations.^  Man  may  be,  even  in  France,  a  com- 
munity-building animal,  but  the  state  has  watched  nar- 
rowly his  efforts  at  construction.  It  is  only  within  the  last 
thirty  years  that  the  bonds  of  a  restraining  vigilance  have  been 
finally  relaxed.  The  right  of  association  was,  before  the  Revolu- 
tion, strictly  dependent  upon  the  monarchical  will.  The  royal 
sovereignty  towered  above  all,  so  that  even  the  natural  tend- 
ency to  labor  organisation  became  nothing  so  much  as  a  vast 
secret  society  living  less  by  governmental  benison  than. by  defi- 
ance of  it.  It  seems  clear  enough  that  what  associations, 
whether  religious  or  secular,  were  able  to  exist,  were  the  offspring 
of  a  privilege  tardily  given  and  illiberally  exercised.  For  to 
exert  even  the  legislative  powers  implied  in  the  concession  of 
recognised  personality  seemed  to  the  jurist  no  less  than  to  the 
political  theorist  to  involve  a  derogation  from  state-power.  The 
king  must  be  master  of  his  estate;  and  he  will  not  hesitate  to 
teach  his  subjects  that  sovereignty  knows  no  limits  save  his 
good  pleasure.  The  ancien  regime  implied  a  monistic  state; 
and  when  for  the  crown  was  substituted  the  nation,  the  worship 
of  a  unified  indivisibility  underwent  no  change.  Rather  did  it 
increase  in  intensity;  for  the  associations  of  that  period  which 
the  Revolution  made  at  a  stroke  antiquity  were  the  symbols  of 
a  hated  privilege.  So  it  was  that  Le  Chapelier  could  take  to 
heart  the  teaching  of  Rousseau;^   and  when  corporate  freedom 

^For  a  very  complete  bibliography  cf.  P.  Harmignie  "L'Etat  et  Ses 
Agents"  (1911)  and  M.  Leroy.  "Syndicats  et  Services  Publics"  (1909) 
to  both  of  which  I  am  greatly  indebted. 

2  For  a  history  of  the  right  of  association  in  France  from  1789-1901,  see 
the  very  able  doctor's  thesis  of  M.  Faget  de  Casteljau  (1908). 

3  "Contrat  Social,"  Bk.,  II,  Ch.  III.     Faget  de  Casteljau,  op.  cit.,  Ill  f. 


322        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 


interposed  a  loyalty  between  state  and  individual,  it  could  not 
avoid  destruction. 

It  was  hardly  a  generous  outlook  even  if,  in  the  event,  it  has 
its  explanation.  For  where  the  state  attempts  the  absorption 
of  the  loyalties  of  men,  what  it  effects  is  either  to  drive  them 
under  ground  or  to  transfer  their  energies  to  a  sphere  where  the 
restraint  is  mitigated.  The  law  might  forbid  the  Jesuits  to  pre- 
form their  religious  functions  in  the  state;  but  the  historian  has 
no  difficulty  in  discovering  their  presence  under  a  variety  of 
different  forms.*  Nor  is  it  unmeaning  to  suggest  that  the  divi-^ 
sion  of  French  parties  into  a  plethora  of  groups  owes  its  origin 
less  to  any  inherent  naturalness  or  to  a  proved  benefit  in  the 
performance  of  party-functions  than  to  the  possibihty  such 
division  affords  for  the  erection  of  a  system  of  loyalties  external 
to  that  of  the  state.  Certainly  no  such  phenomenon  has  been  seen 
in  Anglo-Saxon  countries  where,  on  the  whole,  the  right  of  asso- 
ciation has  found  but  little  legal  hindrance;*  and  it  is  surely 
notable  in  this  connection  that  when  de  Tocqueville  visited 
America,  within  half  a  century  of  the  foundation  of  the  RepubUc, 
what  should,  above  all,  have  impressed  him  was  the  astounding 
wealth  of  American  group-life.^ 

Such  suppression  was,  in  fact,  no  more  than  a  decadent  inheri- 
tance from  the  Roman  conception  of  the  state.'  It  might  be 
necessary  when  the  restored  Bourbons  were  aiming  at  the  de- 
struction of  the  Revolutionary  ideals.  It  had  its  value  when 
the  effort  of  Guizot  was  towards  the  erection  of  a  quasi-despot- 
ism  under  democratic  forms.  The  brief  history  of  the  second 
republic  shows  an  immediate  restoration  to  men  of  the  forms 
under  which  their  natural  instincts  may  obtain  the  satisfaction 
of  unconcealed  grcgariousness.^  But  the  plebiscite  which  en- 
abled Louis  Napoleon  to  renew  the  system  of  his  great  ancestor 
involved  the  adoption  of  that  ancestor's  attitude  to  all  loyalties 
which  might  stand  between  him  and  his  subjects.     The  third 

*  Cf.  Debidour,  "L'Eglise  ct  L'Etat  dc  1879  a  1870,"  p.  329  f. 
'  Cf .  M.  H.  E.   Barrault's  very  able  thesis,  "Lc   Droit  d'association 
en  Angleterre." 

8  "Democracy  in  America,"  Part  II,  Bk.  II,  Ch.  V. 

7  Cf.  Duguit,  "Les  Transformations  du  Droit  Public,"  Ch.  I. 

8  Constitution  of  1848,  Art.  8. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        323 

republic,  in  its  early  history  at  least,  was  too  precariously  estab- 
lished to  venture  on  a  freedom  which,  in  the  result,  might  well 
have  proved  too  costly.  It  was  not  until  1884  that  M.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  took  his  courage  in  his  hands  and  allowed  what  was 
virtually  freedom  of  professional  association.  It  was  not  until 
seventeen  years  later  that  the  ideals  of  1848  were  at  last  fulfilled 
and  a  general  right  of  association  established.  Yet,  even  today, 
the  significant  limitations  that  exist  bear  testimony  to  the  stub- 
born persistence  of  the  older  ideas. 

Into  one  branch  of  the  state  the  idea  of  a  freedom  of  asso- 
ciation penetrated  with  even  greater  difficulty.  A  civil  servant 
was,  in  the  ancien  regime,  above  all  a  servant  of  the  king;  and 
in  that  centraHsed  system  which  de  Tocqueville  has  so  magis- 
trally  shown  to  be  anterior  to  the  Revolution,  the  idea  of  a 
reciprocal  relation  between  master  and  servant  seems  not  to 
have  entered.  For  down  to  the  very  eve  of  1789  the  govern- 
ment of  France  possesses,  at  least  to  an  external  observer, 
many  of  the  characteristics  of  the  king's  household.^  The  king 
cannot  have  about  him  servants  displeasing  to  his  majesty. 
He  may,  indeed,  like  a  fourteenth  century  king,  announce  that 
he  will  look  not  to  the  man  but  to  the  office;^"  but  when  sover- 
eignty is  no  more  than  the  royal  pleasure  this  is  but  a  counsel 
of  perfection.  It  does  not,  at  any  rate,  seem  to  have  been  en- 
forced, and  the  principles  of  administration  were  left  un- 
changed by  the  Revolution  save  that  the  genius  of  Napoleon 
secured  an  efficiency  before  unknown. ^^ 

It  is  not  until  the  later  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  that 
signs  of  a  change  could  be  observed. ^^  Whatever  breach  in 
hierarchical  systems  the  tidal  wave  of  democratic  advance  may 
have  made,  in  the  administrative  regime  it  did  not  progress. 
Divine  right  may  have  been  overthrown.  A  new  and  more 
fruitful  conception  of  the  state  may  have  forced  its  way  to 
general  acceptance."    The  irresponsibility  of  public  power  may 

'  Flach,  "Origines  de  I'ancienne  France,"  III,  504. 

1"  Quoted  fromG.  Demartial,  "Le  Statut  dcs  Fonctionnaires.'  The  re- 
mark is  from  a  royal  edict  of  1356. 

"  Cf.  Leroy,  "Les  Transformations  de  la  Puissance  Publique,"  p.  143  f . 
"  Lefas,  ''L'Etat  et  les  Fonctionnaires,"  Introduction. 
"  Cf .  the  first  chapter  of  this  work. 


324        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

have  been  at  last  reduced  to  the  admission  of  Umitations;  but 
behind  the  veil  of  the  internal  processes  of  governmental  ac- 
tivity no  force  could  penetrate.  The  picture  dra\vTi  by  Balzac 
in  the  third  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  as  true,  in 
all  its  essential  details,  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth." 
A  complete  and  arbitrary  control  over  the  details  of  adminis- 
tration was,  after  all,  an  idea  that  had  behind  it  the  weight 
of  a  long,  if  not  an  honourable  tradition.  It  had  survived, 
within  a  century,  no  less  than  seven  regimes — which  seemed  at 
least  a  progmatically  adequate  test  of  its  efficacy.  Nor  was  it 
a  system  which  might  be  expected  to  arouse  much  popular 
interest.  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  has  made  it  a  commonplace  to 
observe  that  a  democracy  is  but  rarely  interested  in  the  processes 
of  administration.  What  compels  its  attention  is  not  so  much 
methods  as  results.  Where  it  is,  largely  speaking,  indifferent 
even  to  the  more  dramatic  aspects  of  its  own  political  ad- 
venture,^^ it  could  hardly  be  expected  to  concentrate  its  mind 
on  the  mechanical  routine  in  which,  from  day  to  day,  the  civil 
servant  is  engaged.  So  long  as  the  services  of  government  were 
performed  with  what  seemed  an  adequate  efficiency,  the  sover- 
eign elector  was  content  to  allow  his  sovereignty  to  go  by 
default.  It  is  a  political  maxim  of  some  import  that  what  is 
unseen  does  not  exist.  Public  attention  was  not  concentrated 
upon  the  problem  of  administration  simply  because  its  existence 
as  a  problem  went  unrealised.  It  was  only  when  it  became 
obvious  that  the  transformation  of  the  state  had  affected  no 
less  its  organization  than  its  functioning,  that  it  became  clear 
that  a  new  administrative  synthesis  was  being  in  fact  effected. 
It  was  an  inevitable  synthesis  to  anyone  who  had  observed 
at  all  accurately  the  evolution  of  the  state.  Its  sovereignty 
might  go  unquestioned  so  long  as  the  functions  it  endeavored 
to  perform  were  hardly  related  to  the  positive  side  of  national 
existence.  A  state  which  limited  its  services  to  the  provision 
of  police,  defence  and  justice  had  hardly  need  of  new  concep- 
tions.   But  with  the  advent  of  what  Professor  Dicey  has  called 

"  Scenes  de  la  Vie  Parisienne,  "Lcs  Employ6s"  (1836). 

*'  For  two  very  different  demonstrations  of  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  a 
really  public  opinion  cf.  Lowell.  "Public  Opinion  and  Popular  Government" 
with   Mr.  Wallas'  "Human  Nature  in  Politics." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        325 

the  collectivist  age  the  infaUibility  of  public  power  was  no 
longer  acceptable.  The  state  itself  became  an  industrial  instru- 
ment; and  it  was  inevitable  that  those  who  worked  for  it  should 
be  unable  to  regard  it  differently  from  any  other  employer. 
Just  as  the  private  entrepreneur  was  being  more  and  more  sub- 
jected to  a  new  legislative  status/^  so  did  the  worker  desire 
that  the  state  should  recognize  the  superiority  of  law  to  itself. 
Nor  was  this  all.  On  all  sides,  pressure  upon  the  political 
mechanisms  of  the  state  assumed  almost  alarming  proportions. 
Parliaments  seemed,  often  enough,  little  more  than  bodies 
which  registered  the  will  of  a  successful  combatant  in  a  conflict 
where  it  had  no  voice."  Fiction  might  declare  its  will  national 
and  sovereign;  but  that  lighthearted  sacrifice  to  tradition  was 
not  in  fact  deceptive.  The  Hfe  of  the  state,  in  fact,  had  over- 
flowed the  boundaries  in  which  political  organisation  would 
have  encased  it,  with  the  natural  result  that  voluntary  effort 
of  every  kind  began  at  once  to  enforce  and  to  supplement 
political  action.  It  was  impossible  even  for  French  tradition 
to  resist  the  impulse  implied  in  these  changes;  and  the  loi  des 
associations  of  M.  Waldeck-Rousseau  did  no  more  than  en- 
shrine popular  aspiration  in  legislative  form. 

In  actual  fact,  it  was  simply  logical  that  the  growth  of  asso- 
ciations should  change  the  perspective  of  the  life  of  the  state. 
Once  new  loyalties  had  been  established  they  became  for  their 
members  sovereign  within  the  hmit  to  which  they  fulfilled  the 
purposes  with  which  they  sympathised.  It  became  clear,  for 
example,  that  in  a  choice  between  loyalty  to  his  fellow-workers 
in  a  trade,  and  loyalty  to  a  state  which  aimed  at  preventing 
those  workers  from  attaining  certain  ends  they  deemed  good, 
there  was  no  inherent  certainty  that  the  average  trade-unionist 
would  feel  a  deeper  claim  on  the  part  of  the  state.  Raison 
d'etat  lost  its  magic  exactly  at  the  point  where  the  variety  of 
group-Ufe  made  it  clear  that  the  will  of  the  state  is  operated 
by  its  agents  and  that  those  agents,  whom  the  dissentient 
v/orker  might  himself  help  both  to  choose  and  dismiss,  could 

18  Cf.  my  "Basis  of  Vicarious  Liability"  in  the  Yale  Law  Journal  for 
Nov.  1916,  for  a  discussion  of  the  nature  of  this  change. 

1^  As  was  very  strikingly  evinced  in  America  in  the  railway  crisis  which 
resulted  in  the  Adamson  Law. 


326        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

lay  no  claim  to  infallibility.  Indeed,  where  they  came  from 
a  class  with  which,  mistakenly  or  no,  he  believed  himself  in 
permanent  conflict,  he  might  even  cease  to  believe  that  the 
state  had  any  claim  upon  his  loyalty  at  all.  It  would  become, 
for  him,  the  instrument  of  men  with  whom  he  was  at  war,  and 
his  effort  would  be  directed  towards  its  destruction.^* 

It  is  in  the  light  of  such  a  development  that  the  growth  of 
a  demand  for  autonomy  in  the  French  public  services  must  be 
understood.  When  the  old  notion  of  sovereignty  showed  signs 
of  decay,  it  was  inevitable  that  those  most  greatly  affected  by 
its  control  should  seek  release  from  its  trammels.  With  the 
growth  of  state-enterprise  in  industry  it  was  even  more  in- 
evitable that  the  state-proletariat  thus  brought  into  being 
should  refuse  the  surrender  of  privileges  it  had  fought  so  hard 
to  win  outside  the  public  service.  And  in  an  age  when  the  no- 
tion of  authority  itself  was,  in  its  old  acceptance,  assailed  on 
every  hand,  to  the  servants  of  the  state  there  seemed  little 
enough  reason  to  abstain  from  additional  criticism.  It  might 
be  true  that  the  entrance  of  these  revolutionary  ideals  into  the 
civil  service  was  hardly  perceived  by  the  mass  of  men.  The 
democratisation  of  institutions  had  become  so  general  that  it 
is  doubtful  if  men  were  aware  of  the  retention  of  despotic  ideals 
in  the  internal  organisation  of  government.  Where,  indeed,  it 
did,  it  was  easy  for  statesmen  to  lull  the  awakening  suspicion 
by  depicting  revolt  as  an  attack  upon  that  process  upon  which 
the  life  of  the  state  depended.  Government  was  democratic  in 
its  origins.  Its  birth  might  thus  be  used  to  throw  a  cloak  of 
saintliness  about  it.  So  that  even  if  the  administration  of 
France  remained  arbitrary  in  method  and  hierarchical  in  struc- 
ture it  had  some  sort  of  popular  sanction  for  its  retention  of 
an  antique  custom.  A  far  more  radical  effort  was  needed  if 
public  opinion  was  to  realise  the  significance  of  administrative 
corporateness. 

II.  THE  COMPLAINTS  OF  THE  CIVIL  SERVICE 

The  claim  of  the  civil  servant  of  the  right  to  association  has 
raised  legal  and  political  problems  of  a  magnitude  so  immense 

*8  Cf .  the  very  able  essay  of  M.  Berth,  "  Marchands,  Intellectuels,  et 
Politiciens"  in  the  Mouvement  Sodaliste  for  1907-8. 


AUTHORITY    IN    THE    MODERN    STATE         327 

that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  set  limits  to  their  implication. 
They  have  been  very  variously  regarded.  To  some  the  herald 
of  release^^  from  a  state  dangerous  because  it  is  as  inefficient 
and  arbitrary  as  it  is  unintelligent  and  all-powerful,  to  others^" 
it  is  little  less  than  an  invitation  to  anarchy.  If  the  civil  servant 
claim  the  right  to  defy  the  state  from  whom  can  obedience  be 
expected?  Yet,  in  fact,  the  problem  is  less  simple  than  such 
statement  seems  to  make  it.  The  effort  of  the  civil  servant  is 
less  towards  defiance  of  the  state  than  towards  the  discovery 
of  means  whereby  the  challenge  may  be  rendered  unnecessary. 
In  that  aspect  the  movement  is  less  towards  anarchy  than  to- 
wards order.  And  a  demand  so  widespread  must,  after  all, 
have  had  its  causes.  The  claim  put  forward  by  those  who 
advocate  the  right  to  association  is  simple.  It  is  that  the 
abuses  from  which  they  have  suffered  are  inherent  in  the  pres- 
ent system.  It  is  impossible,  in  their  view,  at  all  effectively  to 
mend  the  civil  service.  What  has  become  essential  is  its  com- 
plete reconstruction.  It  is  a  technical  ideal  they  have  in  view — 
an  insistence  that  administration  is  a  professional  service  so 
expert  in  character  as  to  demand  a  regulation  beyond  political 
control  of  the  ordinary  kind.^^  But  their  critics  see  in  their 
cause  no  more  than  an  effort  which  may  well  paralyse  the 
national  life.  They  urge  that  what  is  demanded  is  derived  less 
from  an  enthusiasm  for  administrative  efficiency  than  from 
the  ordinary  phenomena  of  corporate  selfishness.  Nor  is  pubr 
lie  opinion  more  sympathetic.  A  people  which  sees  on  every 
hand  great  increase  both  in  the  number  of  civil  servants  and  in 
the  budget  they  entail,  has  not  the  patience,  even  if  it  had  the 
time,  to  examine  those  demands  in  detail.  The  civil  service 
seems  to  the  average  man  the  most  comfortable  of  existences. 
The  salary  is  fixed  and  certain.  There  is  no  fear  of  unemploy- 
ment. Economic  crises  leave  it  unaffected.  Provision  is  made 
against  both  accident  and  old  age.     In  a  period  of  growing. 

's  Cf.  Leroy,  "Syndicates  et  Services  Publics,"  Ch.  III. 

2"  F.  Faure  in  Revue  Politique  et  Parlementaire  1907,  "Les  Syndicats 
dcs  Fonctionnaires  et  le  projet  du  Governement."  I  have  discussed  these 
various  attitudes  below. 

21  Cf.  Book  IX  of  M.  I>eroy's  really  noble  book,  "  La  Coutume  Ouvridre" 
(1913). 


328        AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

taxation  what  he  tends  to  see  is  less  the  grievance  than  the 
privilege  of  such  labour.  He  remembers  not  the  services  he 
has  secured  from  public  administration  so  much  as  the  ills  he 
has  suffered  from  its  suspension.  What  impresses  him  is  less  the 
result  of  uninterrupted  routine  than  the  disasters  which  may 
attend  such  dislocation  as  the  famous  postal  strike  of  1909. 
He  knows  that  there  arc  close  upon  a  million  civil  servants  in 
France,  and  Guy  de  Maupassant  has  with  genial  irony  con- 
vinced him  that  they  have  causes  for  other  sentiment  than 
grievance.22  Complaints  are  for  him  no  more  than  the  unusual 
accompaniments  of  a  process  in  which  he  has  no  interest.  They 
represent  the  failure  of  services  which  he  pays  taxes  in  order 
to  guarantee.  They  thus  defeat  for  him  the  end  of  the  state; 
and  he  finds  it  difficult  to  understand,  much  less  to  condone, 
the  ambitions  they  imply. 

Yet  the  problem  cannot  be  thus  easily  dismissed.  More  than 
a  thousand  societies  testify  to  the  determination  of  the  civil 
service  to  protect  its  interest  against  abuses.  They  constitute 
essentially  trade-unions,  and,  hke  trade-unions,  they  aim  above 
all  at  the  defence  of  the  economic  interests  of  their  members. 
They  have,  too,  the  additional  object  of  safeguarding  profes- 
sional standards,  exactly  as  similar  organizations  among  lawyers 
and  doctors.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  their  grievances  ".re 
real.  Not,  indeed,  that  they  have  developed  in  any  special 
degree  in  the  last  ten  years.  Rather  it  is  that  during  the  last 
ten  years  there  has  come  an  increasing  consciousness  of  the 
way  in  which  they  may  best  be  removed.  So  long  as  the  sover- 
eignty of  the  state  went  virtually  without  challenge,  it  was 
hardly  conceivable  that  where  others  were  silent,  its  own  serv- 
ants would  resist.  It  was  only  with  the  visible  transformation 
of  the  very  nature  of  public  power  that  a  realisation  came  of 
what  weapons  lay  in  their  hands. ^^ 

The  main  abuse  of  which  the  civil  service  complains  is  nat- 
urally favouritism.    Positions  of  trust  are  at  the  mercy  of  the 

22  On  the  numbers  and  salaries  of  the  Civil  Service  cf.  Lefas,  "L'Etat  et 
les  Fonctionnaires,"  Chap.  II. 

23  For  the  number  of  associations  and  their  growth  see  the  official  report 
to  the  Chamber  of  M.  Jeanneney  (Hachetie,  190S),  p.  230  f.  But  he  does 
not  count  the  societies  formed  prior  to  1901  and  suppressed  by  authority. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        329 

government.  Partisanship  is  the  test  of  pubhc  advancement; 
and  even  so  distinguished  a  statesman  as  M.  Waldcck-Rousseau 
did  not  hesitate  to  assert  that  confidence  could  be  given  only 
to  those  of  whose  political  views  the  government  had  the 
assurance  implied  in  support.^^  Irregularities  of  every  kind 
are  committed,  so  that  the  very  rules  by  which  the  different 
departments  of  the  civil  service  are  governed  become  in  fact 
worthless.  An  official  may  be  nominated  to  the  police  service 
without  passing  the  necessary  examination.  A  distinguished 
historian  like  M.  Delisle  can  be  dismissed  from  a  lifelong  post 
at  the  Archives  to  make  room  for  a  young  political  nominee 
ignorant  of  even  the  rudiments  of  his  profession.  An  inspector 
in  the  ministry  of  education  is  almost  at  the  mercy  of  a  deputy 
who  can  not  only  destroy  his  career,  but  that  of  the  teachers 
with  whose  supervision  he  is  charged.^^  Similar  complaints 
come  from  the  post-office,  the  government  arsenals,  even  the 
magistracies.^^  France  has  what  has  been  in  England  unneces- 
sary since  1870,  its  Black  Book  of  political  nepotism.^'  In  a 
single  year,  M.  Simyan,  the  under-secretary  of  state  for  posts 
and  telegraphs,  received  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  let- 
ters recommending  candidates  for  office  almost  entirely  on 
political  grounds.^*  M.  Steeg  has  given  numerous  instances 
in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  itself  of  nominations  that  have 
been  granted  in  every  part  of  the  civil  service  for  reasons  other 
than  merit,  and  without  regard  to  the  regulations  involved.^^ 
Against  the  political  power  a  deputy  can  exert  the  fact  is  clear 
that  few  officials  dare  hope  to  compete.  They  cannot  make 
headway  against  the  influence  of  a  man  upon  whose  vote  the 
government  is  counting  for  its  very  existence,  and  that  the 
more  certainly  in  a  country  where,  as  in  France,  the  executive 

"  See  the  famous  Toulouse  speech  of  Oct.  28,  1900.  For  an  almost 
exactly  similar  American  utterance  of  the  speech  of.  Mr.  Johnson,  a  con- 
gressman for  Kentucky,  in  the  Congressional  Record  for  Oct.  10,  1913. 

2^  Leyret,  "La  R6publique  et  Les  Politiciens,"  p.  29  f. 

2^  On  this  last  evil  of  the  very  able  speech  cf.  M.  Louis  Martin  in  the 
Chamber,  Journal  Officiel,  Nov.  10,  1905. 

2^  Cf.  "Le  Livre  d'or  Des  Fils  a  Papa." 

28  M.  Thibault,  "Les  Syndicats  de  Fonctionnairos"  (1909). 

"  Journal  Officiel,  May  9,  1907. 


330        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

has  not  yet  made  itself  master  of  the  legislature.  It  is  surely 
clear  that  the  civil  servant  is  literally  driven  to  combine  against 
the  minister  to  preserve  the  very  regulations  by  which  the 
department  is  supposed  to  be  governed. 

The  private  opinions  of  the  civil  servant  are  subject  to  a 
degrading  surveillance.  "The  state,"  says  M.  Leroy-BeauHeu 
with  graphic  emphasis,^"  "strangles  its  personnel."  It  seems, 
indeed,  to  imagine  that  it  has  the  right  completely  to  control 
the  personal  life  of  its  officials  in  every  particular.  M.  Briand's 
ministry,  at  the  time  of  the  Separation,  refused  even  to  guar- 
antee officials  freedom  of  religious  worship.^^  A  teacher  was 
dismissed  for  visiting  the  cure  of  his  commune,  and  not  even 
the  unanimous  petition  of  its  inhabitants  could  secure  his  rein- 
statement.'^2  \  postmistress  was  transferred  on  the  ground  of 
reactionary  opinions  because  one  of  her  sons  was  a  priest,  and 
the  other  employed  by  a  notorious  conservative.^*  An  in- 
spector was  dismissed  for  refusing  to  answer  political  letters 
of  recommendation.^*  And  one  distinguished  politician,  M. 
Clemenceau,  does  not  seem  to  doubt  that  what  the  govern- 
ments pays  for  is  intellectual  servitude.^^  "The  government," 
said  M.  Dubief,  a  former  minister  of  commerce,*^  "will  not 
surrender  the  right  to  know  the  attitude  of  its  servants  to  the 
republic." 

It  of  course  follows  that  if  private  opinions  are  so  carefully 
scrutinised  their  public  expression  is  rigidly  suppressed.^''  Lib- 
erty of  action  is  necessarily  denied  if  private  opinion  is  to  be 
controlled.  Teachers  have  been  dismissed  for  making  pacifist 
speeches.^^  Officials  who  take  a  leading  part  in  the  work  of 
professional   organisation   find    themselves   interrogated,    sus- 

3"  P.  Leroy-Beaulieu,  "L'Etat  Moderne  et  Ses  Fonctions,"  p.  81. 
3'  Journal  Oficiel,  Nov.  20,  1905. 
32  Journal  Ojjicid,  Jan.  31,  1909. 
"  P.,Harmignie,  "L'Etat  et  Ses  Agents,"  p.  31. 
^'  Rejorme  Social,  April  1,  1909,  p.  417. 
'*  Ibid. 

^'^  Journal  Officiel,  Feb.  8,  1905. 

"''  On  this  problem  in  England  of.  the  Report  of  the  Royal  Commission. 
Pari.  Papers,  1914,  Vol.  XVI,  p.  95. 

s8  Guiraud,  "L'Ecole  et  La  Famille,"  p.  103. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        331 

pended,  even  dismissed. ^^  A  teacher  was  dismissed  for  attack- 
ing the  prefect  of  his  department  in  the  press.  The  maritime 
prefect  of  Toulon  refused  to  admit  into  the  arsenal  the  trade 
paper  of  the  Marine  Workers'  Federation.  A  clerk  who  proph- 
esied in  the  journal  of  his  association  that  conditions  in  the  local 
treasury  must  eventually  result  in  a  strike  was  dismissed  for 
so  doing.  Discipline,  it  was  argued  in  all  these  cases,  is  im- 
possible if  the  right  to  criticise  anything  relating  to  government 
is  assumed.  Yet  when  the  administrative  means  of  individual 
protest  are  deemed  inadequate  it  is  difficult  to  see  how,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  technical  journal  of  a  profession  can  avoid  the 
discussion  of  a  technical  problem,  or  why  it  is  more  inappro- 
priate for  a  civil  servant  to  have  opinions  on  pacifism  than  it 
is  for  Mr.  Disraeli  to  make  epigrams  about  Darwin, 

Problems  such  as  these  are  the  most  complex  the  adminis- 
trative issue  affords,  for  their  solution  involves  the  regulation 
of  parliamentary  government  in  a  way  that  has  thus  far  been 
unknown.^*^  The  questions  raised  by  the  material  situation  of 
the  civil  servant  are  far  less  complex  in  character.  It  is  natural 
enough  that  all  kinds  of  grievances  should  exist  in  relation  to 
the  physical  conditions  of  service.  Wages  are  often  low;  the 
hours  of  labour  are  deemed  over-long;  vacations  do  not  come 
at  a  time  when  they  can  be  adequately  profitable.  Not,  in-^ 
deed,  that  the  civil  service  has  not  involved  a  constantly-in- 
creasing expenditure.  In  the  post-office,  for  example,  where 
the  intensity  of  grievance  has  on  two  occasions  led  to  a  serious 
strike,  the  expenses  have  increased  in  ten  years  from  177  to 
297  million  francs,  and  the  receipts  have  not  risen  proportion- 
ately.^^ The  same  is  true,  in  some  degree,  of  every  government 
department,^^  and  that  at  a  time  when  it  is  claimed  by  M. 
C16menceau  that  they  are  all  overstaffed.^^  The  problem  of 
pensions  is  no  more  than  a  variation  upon  a  similar  theme. 

"  Revue. Socialiste,  1909,  p.  388. 

*"  Except  at  England  where  they  have  largely  been  met.  But  for  a 
recrudescence  of  the  evils  of  patronage  see  an  article  in  the  Civilian  for 
Nov.  23,  '12. 

*^  Cf.  the  Report  to  the  Chamber  on  the  Budget  des  Postes  of  M. 
Noulens,  in  1908. 

••^  Bulletin  de  Slatistique  du  Ministbre  des  Finances,  July,  1905. 

«  Journal  Officiel,  May  15,  1907. 


332        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

The  problem  of  administrative  discipline  and  promotion  is 
far  more  complex,  and  the  report  of  every  commission  that 
has  discussed  the  subject  shows  that  it  has  nowhere  been  satis- 
factorily solved.  The  right  to  discipline  a  civil  servant  has  as 
its  aim  the  repression  of  such  conduct  as  may  hurt  the  condi- 
tion of  the  public  service.  That,  after  all,  is  simple  and  obvious 
enough;  but  the  way  in  which  the  repression  is  to  be  exercised 
involves  immense  difficulties.  Is  it  action  taken  by  the  minis- 
ter in  the  name  of  the  state?  Does  he  therein  occupy  the  posi- 
tion of  an  employer  who  settles  at  his  pleasure  how  he  will  deal 
with  an  inefficient  workman?  Is  it  action  taken  by  the  minis- 
ter in  the  name  of  the  state,  as  the  head,  for  instance,  of  a 
railway  company  may  act  as  the  representative  of  the  corporate 
person?  Or  is  it,  as  the  civil  servants  claim,  action  taken  still, 
indeed,  by  the  minister,  but  acting  as  the  head  of  a  professional 
and  technical  service  temporarily  placed  under  his  control? 
The  tendency  of  ministers  themselves  is  to  act  upon  the  first 
hypothesis;  it  is  only  natural,  when  the  evolution  of  the  idea  of 
public  service  is  borne  in  mind,  that  this  should  be  the  case. 
Every  minister  is  in  theory  charged  with  the  compilation  of 
rules  to  deal  with  the  officials  in  his  department.  It  is  not, 
then,  difficult  for  him  to  assume  that  if  he  can  make  and  un- 
make them  at  his  will,  his  power  is  autocratic.  The  hierarchical 
structure  of  French  administration'*^  tends,  in  any  case,  to 
identify  order  with  a  somewhat  arbitrary  exercise  of  power. 
Discipline,  it  has  been  argued,  is  impossible  if  democratic  co- 
operation on  the  part  of  the  civil  service  is  admitted.  That 
autocracy  is  naturally  a  matter  of  grave  suspicion  to  the  official. 
He  desires  to  replace  it  by  a  method  which  will  enable  him  to 
share  in  the  determination  of  punishments.  He  has,  indeed, 
already  a  certain  share  in  the  councils  of  discipline;  but  this  is 
always  minority  representation  and  rarely  elective.'*^  He  is 
anxious,  moreover,  that  official  control  should  be  strictly  lim- 
ited to  acts  done  in  the  course  of  public  emploj-ment.  If  M. 
Negre,  for  example,  displays  a  poster  containing  an  open  letter 

«  For  a  brilliant  analysis  cf.  Duguit,  "L'Etat,"  Vol,  I,  p.  475  f,  and  the 
caustic  analysis  of  M.  Leroy  in  the  third  chapter  of  his  "Transformations 
de  la  Puissance  Pul)lique." 

*^  Cf.  Bonnard,  "De  la  Repression  des  Fautcs." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        333 

to  the  Prime  Minister  of  a  somewhat  critical  character,  he 
ought  not  to  be  penahsed  for  an  act  obviously  done,  so  it  is 
claimed,  in  his  capacity  as  a  citizen.^^  The  civil  servant  demands 
the  replacement  of  such  arbitrary  power  by  a  system  of  guar- 
antees. The  entrance  to  public  employment  should  be  so  regu- 
lated as  to  put  it  bej^ond  the  reach  of  ordinary  ministerial 
control.  Fairness  should  be  guaranteed  by  communicating  to 
every  civil  servant  the  documents  upon  which  his  position 
depends.  Punishments  should  no  longer  be  arbitrary  and  acci- 
dental. They  should  be  applied  not  secretly  and  from  above,  but 
openly,  and  from  below.  The  council  of  discipline  should  cease 
to  be  a  mere  board  of  advice  composed  of  the  minister's  nomi- 
nees. It  is  only  by  the  removal  of  these  grievances  that  the  civil 
service  can  recover  its  confidence  in  the  goodwill  of  government. 

And  as  with  discipline,  so  with  promotion.  If  there  is  perhaps 
a  tendency  among  officials  to  lay  too  great  emphasis  on  length 
of  service — the  natural  tendency  of  the  expert  to  confuse  an- 
tiquity with  experience — some  safeguard  is  surely  needed 
against  the  abuse  of  favouritism.  Unless  a  bulwark  is  erected 
against  promotion  at  pleasure,  the  deputy,  as  now,  will  pick 
out  his  candidates  for  promotion.  There  are  numerous  instances 
of  the  acceleration  of  advancement  for  purely  political  reasons. 
At  present  there  is  too  little  guarantee  that  a  meritorious  con- 
tinuity of  service  may  count  at  all.  No  precautions  are  taken 
to  see  that  those  whose  names  are  accepted  for  promotion  are 
really  worthy  of  it.  A  vacancy  in  a  higher  position  is  filled  in 
the  most  arbitrary  fashion.  Where  seniority  counts,  it  counts 
absolutely  instead  of  relatively,  so  that  no  precaution  can  be 
taken  to  see  that  it  is  coupled  with  efficiency.  No  system 
exists  which  regulates  the  transference  of  officials  from  one  de- 
partment to  another.  If  a  civil  servant  advances,  as  he  thinks,  too 
slowly  in  one  department,  he  uses  political  influence  to  obtain  a  po- 
sition two  or  three  grades  higher  in  another.  It  is  obvious  enough 
that  thus  to  remain  at  the  mercy  of  what  is  practically  the  minis- 
ter's whim  should  make  the  official  demand  the  security  of  pro- 
fessional standards  organised  under  a  charter  of  independence.^^ 

*^  "Libres  Entretiens,"  4th  series  (1907-S),  p.  230  f. 

*''  Cf.  Demartial  "Les  Statuts  des  Fonctionnaires"  (1909)  and  Georgin. 
"Les  Statutsdes  Fonctionnaires."  (1911).  I  have  discussed  below  the  sig- 
nificance of  these  claims. 


334        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

No  one  can  doubt  the  broad  conclusion  implied  in  these 
grievances.  Each  of  them  is  too  vast  to  make  individual  effort 
in  any  probable  sense  productive.  Each  of  them  demands 
concerted  action  if  speedy  redress  is  to  be  obtained.  That  is 
why  the  last  decade  has  seen  the  immense  growth  of  trade- 
unionism  among  the  civil  servants.  That  growth  was  itself 
the  effect  of  an  intolerable  situation,  and  without  it  the  crisis 
would  never  have  occurred.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  form  asso- 
ciations and  another  to  secure  their  recognition.  The  law  of 
1884  admitted  association  for  the  purpose  of  safeguarding  pro- 
fessional interests;  but  it  is  absolutely  clear  that  its  extension 
to  the  civil  service  was  at  no  moment  intended.^^  The  law  of 
1901  permits  the  formation  of  societies  for  any  general  purpose 
not  contrary  to  public  well-being;  but  it  lacks  the  professional 
and  economic  connotation  that  attaches  to  the  law  of  1884.^^ 
It  is  the  benefit  of  the  first  law  that  the  civil  servants  demand. 
Without  it,  and  all  that  it  impKes,  the  right  of  association  would 
be  fruitless.  For  ministers  have  been  prodigal  in  their  prom- 
ises; and  it  is  sufficiently  clear  that  the  mere  formation  of 
amiable  and  well-intentioned  groups  who  have  neither  threats 
to  make,  nor  the  weapons  with  which  to  fulfil  them  can  prove 
at  all  effective.^" 

The  result  has  been  to  drive  the  lower  grades  of  the  civil 
service  more  and  more  in  the  direction  of  the  syndicalist  move- 
ment. Teachers,  postal  workers,  hospital  warders,  have  formed 
trade-unions  despite  the  legal  prohibition  that  seems  to  exist. 
They  attempt  to  join  the  Bourses  de  Travail.^^  The  more 
eager  spirits  do  not  hesitate  to  claim,  and  sometimes  to  secure, 
affiliation  with  the  Confederation  G^nerale  du  Travail;  and 
thus  to  make  proclaim  of  their  eager  desire  to  overthrow  the 
bourgeois  state.^^  Prohibitions  and  dismissals  have  made  little 
difference.  Dismissals  can  always  be  recalled  by  pressure  in 
the  chamber,  and  since  they  are  the  only  means  by  which  the 

"  Cf .  below. 

"  Paul-Boiicour,  "Les  Syndicats  de  Fonctionnaires,"  p.  1.5. 
">  Alibert,  "Lcs  Syndicats  de  Fonctionnaires,"  p.  84. 
"  Cf.  the  prohibitive  decree  of  August  11,  1905. 

"  Cf.  the  Open  Letter  to  M.  Cl^menceau  reprinted  by  Leroy  Ib  "Syn- 
dicats et  Services  Publics." 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        335 

prohibition  can  be  enforced  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  remain 
ineffective.^'  Nor  are  the  different  departments  remaining 
distinct.  Federations  and  congresses,  sometimes  even  interna- 
tional in  character,  testify  to  the  community  of  feeling  by 
which  the  civil  service  is  penetrated.^^ 

The  implication  of  the  demand  to  associate  under  the  law 
of  1884  is,  of  course,  perfectly  clear.  When  the  association  be- 
comes a  recognised  trade-union  it  possesses  the  right  to  strike; 
and  certainly  there  are  few  among  the  more  advanced  fonc- 
tionnaires  who  deny  their  appreciation  of  this  weapon.  If  it  is 
answered  that  the  strike  is  not  only  brutal  but  often  ineffective, 
the  civil  servant  makes  reply,  just  as  the  syndicalist,  that 
nothing  is  so  likely  to  give  his  colleagues  their  proper  sense  of 
class-consciousness.  Indeed,  the  emphasis  on  the  law  of  1884 
is,  above  all,  an  emphasis  of  sentiment.^^  The  humble  fonc- 
tionnaire  cannot  help  feeling  that  to  call  him  a  member  of  the 
governing  classes  is  an  absurd  mis-application  of  terms.  Rela- 
tive to  the  government,  his  situation  is  exactly  the  situation  of 
an  ordinary  member  of  the  working-classes  and  the  equation 
of  position  demands,  in  his  view,  the  equation  of  methods.*^ 
Arguments  derived  from  legal  theory  rather  naturally  leave 
him  a  little  cold.  When  he  is  told  by  so  sympathetic  an  ob- 
server as  M.  Duguit"  that  a  strike  in  the  civil  service  is  sub- 
versive of  its  very  nature  he  is  not  likely,  until  his  grievances 
have  received  their  fundamental  remedy,  to  be  overwhelmed 
with  a  sense  of  shame.  He  will  say  quite  simply  that  he  is  im- 
mediately interested  not  in  the  functioning  of  a  service  for 
ends  of  which  he  does  not  approve  by  methods  from  which  he 
suffers,  but  in  taking  the  shortest  route  to  a  transformation  of 
the  whole  system.  He  has  technical  ideals  without  doubt; 
but  one  cannot  have  technical  ideals  until  an  adequate  milieu 
for  their  application  has  been  obtained. 

«  Cf.  Journal  Officiel,  July  11,  1906,  March  10,  1908,  June  22,  1909. 
"  Beaubois,  Mouvement  Socialiste,  April,  1909,  p.  291. 
'^Bougl6,  "SyndicatsdeFonctionnaires,"  Revue  Metaphysique  et  Morale. 
1907,  p.  671. 

5^  Fourniere  "Les  Fonctions  de  L'Etat,"  Revue  Socialiste,  1907,  p.  40. 
"  "Droit  Social,  Droit  Individuel,"  pp.  134-7. 


336        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

III.  THE  CLAIMS  OF  THE  CIVIL  SERVICE 

What,  obviously  enough,  is  important  in  all  this  is  the  end  it 
has  in  view.  It  is  not  so  much  a  revolt  as  a  revolution,  and  it 
is  at  the  heart  of  the  unified  state  that  it  is  aimed.  The  reality 
of  the  grievances  under  which  the  civil  service  has  laboured  is 
unquestionable;  but  the  sentiment  to  which  they  have  given 
rise  is  no  longer  to  be  assuaged  by  their  amendment.  For  the 
real  problem  that  has  been  created  is  not  a  doubt  of  the  end  to 
which  the  state  is  directed,  but  a  doubt  whether  the  present 
mechanisms  of  government  can  in  fact  attain  that  end.^^  The 
need  of  authority  is  undoubted;  but  challenge  is  issued  to  that" 
authority  simply  because  the  fonctionnaire  no  longer  believes 
that  its  autocratic  exercise  can  achieve  the  purposes  for  which, 
theoretically,  it  exists.  The  fact  that  authority  depends  on  its 
acceptance  by  those  over  whom  it  is  exerted  no  longer  needs 
demonstration.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  the  capital  fact  is  demon- 
strated that  the_fun4amental  problem  of  political  sciejice_is 
not  how  power  originated,  but  how  it  can  be  justified.^^  What 
the  theorists  of  this  movement  have  done  is  to  divide  the  state 
into  rulers  and  subjects  and  to  proclaim  to  the  latter  that  the 
object  of  the  state  cannot,  in  the  present  synthesis,  be  fulfilled. 
So  that  they  are  compelled  by  conviction  to  join  hands  with 
the  revolutionary  elements  of  modern  society  that,  from  their 
joint  efforts,  a  new  state  may  be  born. 

Even  so  barely  stated,  the  argument  is  far-reaching  enough; 
but  the  method  of  its  detailed  presentation  gives  it  a  strength 
that  is  even  more  striking.  Unquestionably,  of  course,  the 
movement  contains  men  of  moderate  opinions  who  did  not 
sympathise  with  the  active  enmity  to  the  state  displayed  in  the 
postal  strike  and  desire  no  more  than  an  improvement  in  their 
position.^''  Undoubtedly  also,  as  in  every  great  movement,  the 
opinion  of  the  associations  has,  for  the  most  part,  been  guided  by 
the  abihty  and  energy  of  a  few.  But,  equally  clearly,  it  is  this 
active  minority  that  has  fornmlated  the  accepted  principles  of 

^*  Cf.  Berth,  "Marchands,  Intellectuels,  Politiciens,"  in  Mouvement 
Socialist  e,  1907-8. 

'■'  As  Rousseau  and  T.  H.  Green  clearly  perceived.  I  have  discussed  the 
problem  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  book. 

^^  Pougct,  "Les  Bases  du  Syndicahsme,"  p.  21. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        337 


the  movement,  and  their  leadership  is  responsible  both  for  the 
direction  it  has  taken  and  the  successes  it  has  attained.^!  Their 
attitude  is  simply  that  of  the  militant  proletariat.  They  look 
upon  the  administrative  world  as  basically  akin  to  that  of  indus- 
try. The  class-struggle  is  no  less  real  there.  The  humbler  civil- 
servant  there,  as  in  industry  can  free  himself  only  by  his  own 
efforts.  His  triumph  will  come  only  from  the  strength  and 
power  of  liis  associations  which  must  more  and  more  attempt 
the  domination  of  the  services  to  which  he  belongs.  By  the 
strength  of  those  groups  he  can  attain  the  desired  reforms,  if 
not  peaceably,  then  by  the  accepted  methods  of  direct  action. 
The  result  will  be  the  transformation  of  the  state. 

It  is  an  arresting  analogy  that  is  not  without  its  fascination. 
The  humbler  fonctionnaires  seem,  undoubtedly,  to  constitute 
an  adininistrative  proletariat.  The  hierarchical  control  exer- 
cised over  them  by  their  technical  superiors  is  in  no  sense  Ukely 
to  produce  any  real  sentiment  of  co-operation.  The  attitude 
adopted  to  them  by  the  parliamentarians  is  in  every  sense  lam- 
entable. It  is  only  at  a  crisis  that  they  obtain  a  hearing;  but 
the  promises  so  prodigally  made  are  rarely,  if  ever,  fulfilled.  The 
statesmen  are  too  occupied  with  the  mechanisms  of  politics  to 
care  for  the  processes  by  which  their  decisions  are  fulfilled.  And 
within  the  administration  itself  there  is  a  hierarchy  of  classes 
wjiich  corresponds  to  that  of  the  general  social  organisation.^^ 
The  division  between  the  privileged  few  who  are  well-paid  and 
the  mass  whose  salary  is  inadequate  is  very  marked.  The  aver- 
age civil-servant  cannot  hope  to  arrive  at  those  posts;  and 
where  promotion  is  secure,  it  applies  only  to  the  central  admin- 
istration and  not  to  the  provinces.^'  There  is,  in  fact,  a  general 
disproportion  between  labour  and  reward  exactly  as  in  private 
industry.^  And  if  the  higher  fonctionnaires  thus  reap  the  profit 
of  their  subordinates'  work,  the  state  itself  is  for  the  mass  of 
civil  servants  simply  an  employer.     That  is,  of  course,  clear 

"  Cf.  Harmignie,  op.  cit.,  p.  145,  Journal  Officiel,  May  14,  1907  (M. 
Briand). 

*2  Cf.  Fournierc,  Revue  Socialiste,  1907,  p.  40. 

^3  Cf.  Economiale  Frangais,  Nov.  18,  1905,  p.  737  (a  civil-servant's 
letter). 

"  Leroy,  "Transformations  de  La  Puissance  Publique,"  p.  222. 


338        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

when  it  makes  matches  or  builds  ships.  It  is  not  less  an  em- 
ployer when  it  takes  charge  of  public  instruction.  Its  work  of 
administration  requires  a  manual  and  intellectual  proletariat 
just  like  any  business  house.  Even  in  its  judicial  aspect,  so 
M.  Leroy  has  claimed,*"^  the  reality  of  this  character  is  apparent. 
Clearly,  if  the  state  is  an  employer  its  servants  are  wage-earners, 
and  they  cannot,  through  the  accidental  choice  of  employment, 
deprive  themselves  of  means  which  will  prevent  their  exploita- 
tion. Their  position,  as  M.  Millerand  has  said,^^  is  no  more  than 
a  particular  instance  of  a  general  industrial  problem.  The  fight 
is  a  struggle  against  privileges,  whether,  as  in  industry,  those  of 
the  rich,  or  as  in  politics,  those  of  the  government.^^ 

If  they  are  a  proletariat,  they  must,  like  the  workers,  accom- 
plish their  own  salvation.  To  that  end  a  sense  of  unity  is  vital 
and  nothing  can  be  gained  until  it  has  been  created.  So  the 
fonctionnaires  have  not  only  formed  what  correspond  to  craft- 
unions,  but  also  federations  of  workers  in  the  different  depart- 
ments. They  have  seen  that  an  injury  to  one  may  affect  the 
strength  of  the  whole;  and  they  have  not  hesitated  to  make 
corporate  protest  against  individual  injustice.^^  They  have 
supported  one  another  at  times  of  crisis.  They  have  held  con- 
gresses where  assurances  of  fraternity  have  been  exchanged. 
And  their  feeling  of  identity  with  the  working-classes  has  led  to 
an  important  rapprochement  between  them.  Its  basis,  indeed, 
was  already  prepared  in  the  existence  of  an  undeniable  prole- 
tariat in  the  state-monopolies;  ^^  and  the  steps  thence  to  civil 
servants  who  in  the  technical  sense  are  associated  with  the 
administration  was  not  a  great  one.  The  teachers  were  the  first 
to  take  action.  Not  only  did  they  attempt  to  join  the  Bourses 
de  Travail — despite  ministerial  prohibition^" — but  they  have 
gone  so  far  as  to  seek  affiliation  with  the  Confederation  Generale 
du  Travail  which  is  avowedly  revolutionary  in  purpose.  Un- 
doubtedly, indeed,  that  action  has  failed  to  secure  unanimous 

^^  "Syndicats  et  Services  Publics,"  p.  187. 

6"  Sec  Le  Temps,  Feb.  25,  1906. 

*'  Revue  Hehdomadaire,  August  3,  1907,  p.  13. 

**  Harmignie,  op.  cit.,  91. 

*"  Cf.  Beaubois,  Mouvement  Socialisle,  Jan.  1909. 

"  Decree  of  August  11,  1905. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        339 

support.  But  what  is  important  is  the  fact  that  it  should  have 
won  any  support  at  all.  "We  shall  march  by  its  side/'  said 
M.  Negre,  the  outstanding  person  in  the  movement/^  "to  work 
together  for  the  emancipation  of  the  industrial  and  intellectual 
proletariat."  M.  Negre  is  a  teacher,  and  his  attitude  is  the  more 
striking  in  that  the  intellectual  position  of  the  teacher  in  France 
would  seem  to  relate  him  to  the  middle  class;  but  the  avowed 
exponents  of  official  syndicaUsm  have  at  length  accepted  their 
adhesion." 

Nor  is  there  any  distinction  of  method  between  the  militant 
fonctionnaire  and  the  militant  proletariat.  The  whole  purpose 
of  their  desire  to  benefit  rather  from  the  law  of  1884  than  from 
that  of  1901  is  the  abifity  the  former  affords  of  using  the  weapon 
of  the  strike.  "The  collective  suspension  of  work,"  says  M. 
Briquet,"  *'is  the  indispensable  aim  of  every  labour-group  which 
desires  effectively  to  promote  the  collective  interests  of  its  mem- 
bers." Indeed,  a  simple  association,  the  Association  of  Postal 
Workers,  has  not  hesitated  to  disregard  the  technical  distinction 
between  the  two  laws.  It  is  for  them  simply  a  sterile  discussion 
of  doctrine  with  which  they  have  no  concern.''^  The  police  of 
Lyons  did  not  hesitate  to  go  on  strike,  and,  after  the  face  of  the 
government  had  been  saved,  it  appears  that  they  were  success- 
ful.''^ The  teachers,  indeed,  in  some  respects  the  most  advanced 
of  all  the  fonctionnaires,  have  not  proceeded  so  far;  for  it  is 
clear  that  in  their  case  the  temporary  suspension  of  a  public 
service  that  would  be  involved,  does  not  relate  with  sufficient 
intimacy  to  the  necessary  conduct  of  the  national  life.  If  these 
strikes  have  not  had  the  large  results  of  which  their  leaders 
dreamed,  they  have  at  any  rate  shown  the  powerlessness  of  law 
to  prevent  them.  They  have  demonstrated  the  all-important 
fact  that  a  challenge  can  be  issued  to  government.  They  have 
suggested,  since  the  movement  is  only  at  its  beginning,  that  it  is 
a  challenge  to  which  there  may  one  day  be  no  possible  reply. 

It  is,  then,  essentially  a  revolutionary  spirit  with  which  the 

''  Harmignie,  op.  cit.,  p.  105. 

'^  Beaubois  Mouvement  Socialiste,  1905,  p.  505. 

"  Mouvement  Socialiste,  1903,  p.  147. 

''*  Though  it  has  discussed. 

'5  Journal  Officid,  May  23,  1905.  cf.  the  London  police  strike  of  1918. 


340        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

government  is  called  upon  to  deal.  Exactly  as  the  ultimate  aim 
of  the  industrial  movement  is  an  attempt  to  create  an  industrial 
democracy,  so  do  the  fonctionnaires  aim  at  the  creation  of  an 
administrative  democracy.  They  are  compelled,  therefore,  to  be 
suspicious  of  power.  The  state  is  to  them,  as  it  is  to  the  workers, 
the  real  citadel  to  assault.  To  attack  the  government  is  to  sap 
the  foundations  of  an  authority  the  basic  purpose  of  which  seems 
to  them  illegitimate.''^  The  present  system  of  administrative 
organisation  seems  to  them  unsatisfactory  simply  because  its 
underlying  principles  are  inconsistent  with,  the  aims  they  have 
in  view.  So  long  as  the  hierarchy  is  maintained,  the  democrati- 
sation  of  administrative  power  is  impossible.  So  long  as  the 
present  division  exists  between  the  higher  civil  service  and  the 
humbler  fonctionnaires,  the  former,  whose  position  is,  for  the 
most  part,  secure,  are  bound  to  gravitate  towards  the  deputies 
and  make  the  civil  service  poHtical  instead  of  technical  in  char- 
acter. That  is  why  the  fonctionnaire  refuses  his  confidence  to 
the  Chamber.  Its  object  is  too  different  to  be  compatible  with 
his  own.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  itself  a  trade-union  and  its  adminis- 
trative exertions  are  only  one  of  the  ways  in  which  it  promotes 
the  interests  of  its  members.  It  also,  then,  uses  a  kind  of  direct 
action  for  its  purposes;  and  the  gesture  of  the  civil  service  is 
thus  not  distinct  in  quality  from  that  of  the  politician.  This 
discontent  with  authority  expresses  itself  in  many  ways — open 
contempt  for  administrative  regulations,^'^  vituperation  of  the 
Parliament,^^  distrust  even  of  the  republic  itself.  "We  no 
longer  believe  in  words,"  said  an  able  representative  of  this 
attitude,^^  "we  demand  realities;  we  have  lost  our  attachment 
for  forms.  We  calculate  their  worth  and  measure  their  produc- 
tivity. We  no  longer  sacrifice  ourselves  for  sentiment,  we  con- 
sult our  interests.  The  heroic  times  have  passed  away ;  the  hour 
of  practical  effort  has  arrived." 

The  civil  service,  indeed,  has  not  stopped  its  effort  at  the  mere 
criticism  of  the  administrative  system.  It  has  been  compelled 
to  realise  that  the  administrative  system  is,  in  fact,  but  the  re- 

'«  Cf.  M.  Jaures  in  L'  Humanit4,  May  1,  1908. 
''''  Cf.  citations  in  "Harmignie,"  op.  cit.,  p.  126. 
'8  Ibid.,  p.  128. 
"  And  cf .  Ch.  Dupuy  in  Le  Soleil,  April  5,  1909. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        341 

flex  of  a  larger  whole.  There  are  other  institutions  within  the 
state  which  equally  constitute  its  stalwart  defences.  Its  mili- 
tary organisation  is  essentially  a  reservoir  of  state-power.  To 
become  a  soldier  is  so  it  is  argued,  to  lose  contact  with  the  work- 
ing-class, and  to  destroy  a  system  which  thus  uses  that  class 
against  itself  is  clearly  fundamental.  A  congress  of  teachers 
has  pledged  itself  to  pacifism,  and  some  of  them  have  suffered 
dismissal  for  the  violence  of  their  antimilitarist  propaganda.*"^ 
As  is  usually  the  case,  the  offspring  of  pacifist  doctrine  has  been 
internationalism,  and  at  any  rate  before  1914,  many  members 
of  the  civil  service  had  gone  far  towards  its  adoption. 

The  fonctionnaires,  in  fact,  do  not  conceal  from  themselves 
that  it  is  nothing  less  than  an  entire  social  reconstruction  at 
which  they  are  aiming.  That  they  can  effect  it  alone,  they  do  not 
for  a  moment  profess  to  believe ;  but  they  urge  that  government 
normally  disposes  of  so  great  a  power  that  without  their  assist- 
ance a  successful  revolution  can  be  hardly  accomplished.  Nor, 
given  the  conditions,  is  that  an  exaggerated  assumption.  Each 
group  of  them,  moreover,  has  its  function  in  the  task.  It  is  the 
duty  of  the  teacher  to  begin  in  childhood  the  revolutionary 
education  of  the  people;  while  those  actually  concerned  with 
the  technical  work  of  administration  can  overthrow  the  whole 
machine  at  the  critical  moment  of  its  functioning.  M.  Jaures, 
indeed,  was  in  nowise  disturbed  by  the  character  of  the  move- 
ment. "  The  affiliation,"  he  said,*^  "of  civil  servants  to  the  labour 
movement,  to  the  class-struggle,  is  a  revolutionary  fact.  It  is 
not  less  than  a  revolution  when  the  servants  of  the  state  work 
to  reconstruct  the  basis  of  that  social  order  of  which  the  state 
is  the  expression  and  the  guardian."  It  is  a  movement  which 
has  penetrated  every  section  of  the  civil  service.  It  is  ably  or- 
ganized and  its  propaganda  is  conducted  with  relentless  energy. 
It  has  a  brilliant  literature,  and  a  press  of  its  own.  It  has  definite 
ends  to  pursue,  and  it  is  evolving  means  by  which  those  ends 
may  be  attained.  It  is  a  movement  which  at  every  stage  of  its 
progress,  has  been  marked  by  the  courageous  termination  of  its 
leaders.    Certain  it  is  that  one  who  is  at  all  interested  in  the 

80  Journal  Officiel,  June  27,  1908,  Guiraud,  "L'Ecole  et  La  Famille," 
p.  Ill, 

"  Journal  Officiel,  May  15,  1907. 


342        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

development  of  political  processes  dare  neglect  the  richness  of 
its  possibilities. 

For,  after  all,  no  social  movement  is  unique  in  its  age.  Politi- 
cal change  has  links  with  the  past  so  strict  and  so  far-reaching 
that  it  is  rarely  possible  to  ascribe  novelty  to  what  the  heralds 
of  an  idea  themselves  deem  striking  innovation.  Certainly  this 
is  the  case  with  administrative  syndicalism.  It  represents  a 
crisis  for  which  there  has  been  long  and  careful  preparation.  It 
is  part  of  a  larger  federal  synthesis  which  has  ramifications 
throughout  the  industrial  world.  The  very  solutions  it  proposes 
have  intellectual  ancestors  which  were  themselves  the  product 
of  their  time.  This  is  not,  indeed,  to  argue  that  administrative 
syndicalism  is  a  phenomenon  so  ordinary  that  it  can  with  safety 
be  neglected.  It  draws  a  special  importance  from  a  situation 
which  has  of  necessity  tended  to  throw  it  into  striking  relief. 
It  has  succeeded  simply  because  the  evolution  it  summarises 
is  beginning  at  last  to  translate  itself  into  terms  of  practical 
achievement.  It  is  a  variation  upon  the  theme  of  economic 
federation  which  is  itself  the  offspring  of  a  breakdown  in  the 
machinery  of  capitalist  organisation.  It  represents  in  relation 
to  the  state  simply  what  the  large  aspects  of  syndicalism  repre- 
sent in  industrial  change.  It  gives  a  new  connotation  to  sover- 
eignty. It  federalises  the  will  of  the  state.  The  lines,  indeed, 
of  its  evolution  can  not  yet  with  any  certainty  be  drawn.  We 
can  use  descriptive  terms,  suggest  tendencies,  discover  signs  of 
change.  In  the  elements  of  opposition  are  to  be  discovered  the 
means  of  more  intimate  analysis.  From  whatever  source  they 
are  derived,  it  is  a  crisis  that  the  facts  suggest.  The  tidal  wave 
of  democratic  advance  has  at  last  reached  the  inmost  recesses 
of  the  imperial  state.  Our  task  is  the  measurement  of  the  energy 
it  conveys. 

IV.  IMPLICATIONS 

It  is  usual  to  distinguish  three  different  systems  of  administra- 
tive organisation. ^2  What  has  been  called  the  monarchical  so- 
lution would  leave  the  civil  service  at  the  mercy  of  the  execu- 
tive power.  The  present  regime,  that  is  to  say,  might  be 
altered  in  its  accidentals,  but  its  fundamental  features  would 
^*  Salaun,  Revue  Politique  el  Parliamentaire,  Jan.  10,  1908,  p.  148  seq. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        343 

remain  unchanged.  Such  a  method,  it  is  clear,  would  leave 
the  main  cause  of  the  present  unrest  entirely  unsolved.  It 
would  involve  a  patent  contradiction  between  a  democratically 
organised  political  system  and  an  autocratic  administrative 
system.  It  would  withdraw  a  whole  field  of  social  activity 
from  the  dominant  influences  of  the  time.  It  would  look,  not 
to  the  organisation  that  is  to  be,  but  to  the  past  history  of  the 
state.  It  could  be  maintained  only  by  violence,  and  probably 
at  the  sacrifice  of  administrative  efficiency.  The  second  means 
is  its  direct  antithesis.  It  proposes  to  hand  over  to  the  civil 
service  the  control  of  administrative  functions.  The  political 
head  of  a  department  would  state  his  demands,  and  his  orders 
would  be  fulfilled  by  the  fonctionnaires  themselves.  The  de- 
partment would  be  in  every  way  autonomous,  so  that  there 
would  be  no  room  left  for  the  grievances  by  which  the  service 
is  oppressed.  This,  clearly  enough,  is  the  organisation  which 
meets  with  most  favour  among  the  civil  servants  themselves. 
It  transforms  them  into  a  technical  profession,  and  it  leaves 
no  opportunity  for  personal  causes  external  to  the  service  to 
interfere  with  its  functioning.  The  third  solution  is  midway 
between  the  two  others.  It  envisages  a  statutory  organisation 
of  the  civil  service.  The  minister  will  remain  in  control,  but  it 
will  be  a  legally  conditioned  control.  Every  step  of  his  policy 
will  be  conditioned  by  statute.  The  method  of  promotion,  the 
redress  of  grievance,  administrative  responsibility,  the  mechan- 
ism of  suggestion,  will  be  at  every  stage  controlled  by  legal 
regulations.  The  vise  of  the  monarchical  system  will  thus  dis- 
appear while  the  danger  of  administrative  independence  of  the 
national  life  is  sufficiently  safeguarded.  The  justice  of  the  com- 
plaints urged  against  the  monarchical  system  is  admitted,  but 
it  is  not  felt  that  they  justify  so  great  an  innovation  as  admin- 
istrative syndicalism  would  entail. 

Very  clearly,  the  starting-point  of  any  enquiry  must  discuss 
the  origins  of  modern  centralisation.  That  is  in  nowise  doubt- 
ful. We  need  not  agree  with  Taine's  theory  that  the  Revolu- 
tion resulted  in  the  deterioration  of  human  nature^^  to  agree 
that  the  general  chaos  prevented  the  employment  of  the  mech- 
anisms of  liberalism.    Where  the  very  existence  of  power  was 

<«  "R6gime  Moderne,"  Bk.  II,  Ch.  I. 


344        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

threatened,  it  was  only  by  its  concentration  that  it  could  sur- 
vive. What  Napoleon  did  Avas  to  synthesise  that  power  within 
himself;  and  the  equality  that  remained  was  the  equality  of 
a  common  subjection  to  his  will.  He  realised  that  action  in 
the  modern  state  must  be  as  certainly  unified  as  deliberation 
must  be  multiple.  He  demanded  from  the  civil  service  an 
absolute  abandonment  of  their  personality.^^  It  was  the  fulfil- 
ment of  Sieyes'  prevision.  "Power,"  he  had  said,^^  "will  come 
from  above;  from  below  there  will  be  simply  confidence,"  and 
that  was  no  more  than  a  simple  statement  of  fact.  And  cer- 
tainly his  administrative  system  was  not  his  least  durable  wo^-k. 
The  country  was  satisfied  with  an  administration  that  was  at 
any  rate  efficient;  and  the  reaction  upon  it  of  political  democracy 
was  as  yet  too  novel  to  be  at  all  impressive.  So  that  Napoleon's 
successors  could  not  only  use  his  system  but  even  extend  it. 
"Ce  sont  des  administr^s,"  writes M.  Chardon,^^  "qui  de  propos 
d^lib^r^s,  etendent  chaque  jour  I'empire  de  Tadmimstration," 
and,  indeed  the  fact  is  obvious  enough;  for  not  the  least  im- 
portant result  of  the  extension  of  collectivism  has  been  the 
general  expectation  that  government  not  only  can,  but  must, 
meet  every  conceivable  emergency.^'- 

But  while  administrative  power  was  thus  extended,  its  exer- 
cise underwent  no  democratic  percolation.  The  executive 
power  retained  its  imperial  purple.  Nothing  in  the  whole  path 
of  the  nineteenth  century  seemed  able  to  influence  its  organisa- 
tion. Government,  as  in  the  time  of  Napoleon,  is  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  sovereign  people,  and  to  confide  power  to 
those  who  are  not  elected  would  be  to  create  a  state  within  a 
state  and  destroy  the  unity  of  the  whole.  That  is  why  Taine's 
brilliant  description  of  the  Napoleonic  prefect  remains  not  less 
true  today  than  of  the  time  of  which  he  wrote.^^  The  civil 
servant  is  not  an  actor  in  the  events  of  which  he  is  the  admin- 
istrator.   He  is  a  kind  of  perpetual  secretary;  and  M.  Chardon 

"  See  Tarne's  impressive  remarks,  "R6gime  Moderne,"  Vol.  I,  p.  170. 
8»  Ibid.,  I,  168. 

"  "L' Administration  do  la  France,"  p.  2. 

8^  This  was  very  strikingly  evinced  in  the  food  crisis  of  1917  which  led 
to  Mr.  Hoover's  ajjpointment  as  administrator. 
«"  "Regime  Moderne,"  Vol.  II,  p.  240  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        345 

insists  that  there  are  able  and  competent  men  who  never  have 
a  single  decision  to  take  throughout  their  career.^^  The  service 
is  recruited  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  at  the  Revolution; 
everything  is  controlled  by  the  central  power.  If  France  has 
no  longer  Napoleon,  she  has  his  ministers,  and  they  are  less 
successful  in  their  psychology  in  the  degree  to  which  they  lack 
his  personal  fascination.  Here,  again,  it  was  Taine  who  per- 
ceived the  real  crux  of  the  problem.  "They  do  not,"  he  said,^" 
"look  upon  human  association  ...  as  concerted  initiative 
generated  from  below  .  .  .  but  as  a  hierarchy  of  authorities 
imposed  from  above."  Where  the  fundamental  change  in  the 
modern  state  is  an  evolution  almost  directly  antithetic  to  this 
attitude,  it  has  left  untouched  the  civil  service.  Not  even  the 
admission  of  corporate  freedom  has  penetrated  within  the 
executive  realm.^^ 

It  is  a  persistence  as  difficult  to  justify  as  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand. It  is  difficult  to  justify  because  it  is  an  apparent  and, 
as  it  seems,  unnecessary  contradiction  of  democratic  govern- 
ment. It  is  surely  an  erroneous  attitude  to  separate  compe- 
tence and  responsibility;  and  that,  in  fact,  is  the  result  of  the 
present  system.  It  is  easy  to  understand  because,  from  a  long 
historical  chain  of  events,^^  the  average  citizen  in  the  modern 
democracy  seems  anxious,  above  all,  to  perform  his  political 
functions  vicariously.  What  he  asks  from  the  professional 
politician  is  orderly  government  and  he  rarely  examines  the 
means  by  which  it  is  attained.  Whether  M.  Clemenceau  ever 
really  remarked  that  he  could  remain  in  office  so  long  as  he 
wanted,^^  the  fact  remains  that  he  epitomized  very  neatly  the 

89  "L' Administration  de  la  France,"  p.  9. 

9"  "Regime  Moderne,"  Vol.  I,  p.  213. 

91  Cf.  the  admirable  remarks  of  M.  Seignobos,  "Hist,  of  Cont.  Europe," 
p.  222  f. 

*2  They  have  been  brilliantly  analysed,  psychologically,  for  England  by 
Mr.  Graham  WaUas  in  his  "Human  Nature  in  Politics"  and  for  American 
Society  by  Mr.  Lippmann  in  his  "Preface  to  Politics."  In  institutional  terms 
of  the  magistral  analysis  of  Ostrogorski," Democracy  and  the  Organisation 
of  Political  Parties."  I  do  not  know  of  any  similar  French  work,  but  the 
syndicahst  criticisms  of  the  modern  state,  as  M.Lagardelle's  "Socialisme 
Ouvrier"  esp..  Part  I,  are  very  valuable  on  this  point. 

"  Duguit,  "Droit  Social,  Droit  Individuel,"  p.  129. 


346        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

typical  governmental  attitude  to  the  civil  service.  Democracy 
seems  to  have  considered  that  the  security  of  its  life  depended 
on  the  retention  of  the  hierarchical  system.^^  That  may,  per- 
haps, have  been  true  before  the  separation  when  the  safety  of 
the  repubUc  was  still  matter  of  debate.  But  with  the  assurance 
of  its  survival,  the  Napoleonic  system  is  already  obsolete. 

That,  indeed,  is  the  real  meaning  of  the  growth  of  adminis- 
trative syndicalism.  It  has  come  because  there  is  now  no  rea- 
son to  restrain  it.  Antiquity  is  not  a  reason;  and  democracy 
is,  internally  at  least,  in  little  danger  of  disappearance*  The 
executive  power  can  not  make  a  plea  for  its  autoci'atic  exercise 
when  the  army  is  no  longer  a  source  of  disloyalty,  and  the 
church  has  been  reduced  to  a  shadow  of  its  former  influence. 
The  only  reason  for  the  retention  of  the  present  system  is  the 
power  it  places  in  the  hands  of  statesmen.  It  enables  them  to 
corrupt  both  the  civil  service  and  the  electorate.  The  one  he 
can  hold  by  the  fear  of  dismissal,  the  other  by  the  hope  of 
office.  But  it  is  too  obviously  humiliating  for  the  civil  servant 
to  remain  subject  both  to  public  and  private  control.  The  only 
justification  of  arbitrary  power  is  the  impossibihty  of  demo- 
cratic power.  That  impossibility  the  civil  servant  denies.  He 
maintains  that  it  is  based  upon  an  entirely  false  conception  of 
the  imphcations  of  sovereignty.  The  theory  that  the  state 
must,  by  its  very  definition,  be  irresponsible  seems  to  him 
without  root  in  political  fact.  He  knows  what  that  irresponsi- 
bility has  meant  in  the  past.  He  has  weighed  it  and  rejected  it. 
The  hour  has  come  for  new  systems. 

It  is  in  some  such  fashion  that  the  monarchical  system  is 
rejected,  and,  psychologically  at  least,  there  seems  every  rea- 
son for  its  rejection.  No  administrative  system  can  be  ade- 
quate in  which  power  is  concentrated  and  not  disturbed.  No 
service  can  attract  ability  where  the  influence  it  offers  is  hidden 
and  potential,  not  real  and  responsible.'-"'  Nor  are  the -syndi- 
calists more  enamoured  of  a  status  that  is  guaranteed  by 
parliament.  They  are  too  suspicious  of  the  state  to  feel  secure 
at  what  emanates  from  its  organs. ^^    It  is,  after  all,  from  the 

«^  Journal  Officicl,  M.  Clcmenceau,  Speech  of  March  13,  1908. 

95  Mr.  Wallas'  admirable  remarks,  "The  Great  Society,"  pp.  285-8,  290  f . 

9"  For  interesting  evidence  of  a  similar  suspicion  in  England  cf.  Bulletin 
of  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  Vol.  5,  p.  36. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        347 

Parliament  above  all  that  they  have  suffered;  and  it  is  largely 
by  the  manipulation  of  the  civil  service  that  the  majority  in 
the  chamber  retains  its  power.  They  do  not  believe  in  the  mod- 
ern state  simply  because  theirs  has  been  the  most  intimate 
experience  of  it.  What  laws  have  been  suggested  are  all  of  them 
conservative  in  character.  They  attempt  the  compromise  of 
two  irreconcilable  theories.  The  administration  wants  to  exer- 
cise a  final  control  where  the  civil  service  demands  autonomy. 
Nor  are  they  eager  for  a  special  '  osition  in  the  state.  That 
suggestion  is  for  them  no  more  than  an  erroneous  idea  derived 
from  the  original  irresponsibility  of  the  sovereign  state.  It  is 
a  decaying  theory ,^^  and  they  will  not  found  their  relief  upon 
it.  Nor  is  it,  in  any  case,  destined  very  long  to  survive.  Every 
day,  the  jurisprudence  of  the  Conseil  d'Etat  makes  one  more 
inroad  upon  its  life.^^  The  dogma  is  already  too  seriously 
compromised  to  be  capable  any  longer  of  valid  application. 
It  would  still  leave  their  relation  to  the  state  non-contractual 
in  character  to  regulate  their  position  by  statute.  What  they 
desire  is  a  service  on  equal  terms,  a  right  to  make  their  situa- 
tion a  part  of  the  common  law.  Nor  are  they — and  this  is  of 
supreme  importance — willing  to  enjoy  a  situation  which  would 
in  fact  break  the  bonds  of  their  friendship  with  the  industrial 
proletariat.  For  to  attach  themselves  to  the  present  state  is 
to  surrender  the  right  to  work  for  its  transformation.  It  was 
exactly  the  need  of  that  change  they  above  all  felt  at  the  time 
of  their  original  revolt  against  its  excesses.  Clearly,  to  accept 
a  favour  from  its  hands  would  be  to  desert  not  merely  those 
who  stood  by  them  in  their  need,  but  also  the  original  and 
avowed  purpose  of  their  movement.  They  will  not  share  in  so 
great  a  self-stultification. 

So  that  for  them  there  is  no  alternative  save  the  monarchical 
and  syndicalist  solutions.  They  reject  the  first  because  an 
organization  which  deprives  the  workers  of  a  voice  in  the 
determination  of  their  labour  is  in  fact  psychologically  and 
morally  inadequate.  The  second  alone  is  satisfactory  because 
there  only  is  there  guarantee  that  the  humanity  of  the  admin- 
istrative proletariat  is  recognised.     There  only  can  the  method 

"  Cf.  Duguit,  "Le  Droit  Social,  Le  Droit  Individuel,"  p.  72. 

98  Cf .  Duguit,  "Les  Transformations  du  Droit  Public,"  pp.  65-73. 


348        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

of  action  be  in  such  fashion  a  fusion  of  wills  that  every 
voice  can  find  representation  in  the  result,^^  can  make  admin- 
istrative personahty  democratic  in  a  corporate  sense.  They 
beheve,  moreover,  that  institutional  evolution  is  far  more  in  ac- 
cord with  the  position  they  have  taken  up  than  with  the  pro- 
posal of  a  statute.  The  parliamentary  solution  does  not,  after 
all,  depend  upon  an  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  people 
as  a  whole.  Thereby  merely  to  base  government  upon  number 
is  still  to  leave  it  open  to  the  pathetic  manipulation  by  which 
it  has  been  traduced  during  the  nineteenth  century,^''*'  for  we 
are  less  confident  than  before  that  majority-rule  is  a  final 
solution.  They  point  to  the  increasing  development — common 
to  the  whole  world — of  a  political  life  outside  the  ordinary 
cadres  of  parliamentary  systems. ^"^  Not  only  are  they,  as  it 
seems,  determined  to  make  the  government  inferior  to  law  by 
making  it  responsible,  but  also,  by  associations  of  every  kind, 
they  bring  pressure  to  bear  upon  the  legislative  process.  It  is 
a  new  and  striking  effort  to  bring  authority  within  the  bounds 
of  popular  control. ^"^2  n  makes  it  less  likely  to  remain  merely  a 
weapon  in  the  hands  of  those  who  exercise  it.  Nor  can  the 
significance  of  the  elaboration  of  legislative  projects  by  those 
who  have  a  professional  relation  to  their  functioning  be  under- 
estimated.^''* What  we  are  beginning  to  see  is  virtually  law- 
making by  those  over  whom  the  particular  statute  will  exercise 
its  empire.  To  say  that  the  system  is  in  its  infancy  is  in  nowise 
to  belittle  its  implications.  It  is  a  new  source  of  legislative 
power,  even  if  it  be  an  indirect  one;  and  it  clearly  bears,  in  very 

"  Cf.  the  speech  of  M.  Sembat  at  the  Congress  of  the  Agents  des  Posies, 
June  5,  1905;   and  his  paper  in  Documents  du  Progres,  May,  1909,  p.  408. 

*"<•  This  dissatisfaction  with  the  merely  numerical  solution  is  admirably 
expressed  by  a  publicist  who  cannot  be  accused  of  syndicalist  ideas,  M.  Ch. 
Benoist;  cf.  his  "Crise  de  I'Etat  Moderne." 

*"  Cf .  the  very  important  remarks  of  M.  Maxime  Leroy,  "Libres 
Entretiens,"  4me  series,  p.  385  f. 

"2  Cf.  M.  Leroy,  "La  Loi,"  p.  *546  f. 

'"'  This  is  not  less  true  of  America  than  of  France.  Cf .  Leroy,  "La  Loi," 
p.  212  f,  with  the  fact  that  men  like  Professors  Williston  and  Brannan  of 
the  Harvard  Law  School  have  been  charged  with  the  drafting  of  statutes 
which  political  bodies  pass  into  law.  The  influence  of  such  professional 
autonomy  as  that  of  doctors  and  lawyers  is,  of  course,  analogous. 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE        349 

decisive  fashion  upon  the  nature  of  parUamentary  authority. 
For  the  preparation  of  law  by  the  private  initiative  of  experts 
is  the  preparation  of  law  by  men  whose  opinion  it  is  difficult 
to  neglect.  ^°*  Public  opinion  may  be  a  reserve  power,  but  no 
one  can  mistake  the  ultimate  control  it  can  exert,  and  public 
opinion  tends  more  and  more  to  appreciate  the  evolution  of 
this  technical  legislation.  It  almost  seems,  in  fact,  that  a  de- 
mocracy which  has  been  thwarted  of  its  authority  by  its  unifi- 
cation has  found  new  means  of  its  assertion  by  dividing  the 
source  of  power. 

In  such  an  atmosphere,  the  attitude  which  regards  the  state 
as  in  any  sense  an  institution  of  a  special  character  can  hardly 
survive.  Once  the  equality  of  citizens  before  the  law  is  postu- 
lated, it  is  evident  that  their  internal  relations  must  be  demo- 
cratically organised.  We  have  passed,  as  M.  Duguit  has  in- 
sisted, from  a  regime  of  subjective  rights  to  a  regime  of  objective 
duties.  That,  from  those  duties,  rights  may  find  a  secondary 
justification  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  the  real  defence  of 
authority  is  to  show  the  objective  necessity  of  its  exercise.^"^ 
Let  it  be  granted  that  the  personality  of  the  state  is  real,  it 
yet  does  not  follow  that  corporate  personality  begets  rights 
superior  to  individual  rights.^"^  What  each  state-action  must 
show  is  that  the  force  it  entails  produces  a  result  so  valuable  that 
the  life  of  society  would  be  the  poorer  for  its  absence.  But  that 
is  to  say  that  the  real  test  of  state-theory  is  not  the  principles 
upon  which  that  theory  is  based  so  much  as  the  manner  in 
which  they  function.  The  principle,  in  fact,  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  process;  its  teleology  is,  at  bottom,  inductive. 
Its  intentions  may  be  admirable;  but  judgment  cannot  be  made 
until  the  intention  is  realised  in  conduct.  Exactly  where  the 
modern  state  is  being  transformed  is  at  the  point  where  the 
judgment  upon  its  action  has  led  to  new  methods  of  political 
life.  Since  the  only  justification  of  government  is  the  quality 
of  life  its  policy  secures,  the  members  of  the  modern  state  are 

""  Cruet,  "La  Vie  du  Droit,"  pp.  289,  332. 
*"*  Cf.  Chapter  I,  supra,  on  this  point. 

1"'  M.  Duguit  has  denied  this;  but,  as  I  have  elsewhere  tried  to  show, 
on  insufficient  grounds. 


350        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

seeking  new  centres  of  power.  Administrative  syndicalism  is 
an  effort  towards  their  realisation. 

It  is  thus  a  kind  of  decentralisation  for  which  the  fonction- 
naire  is  anxious.  But  it  is  not  merely  the  reconstruction  of 
ancient  territorial  groupings  for  which  he  is  concerned.  It  has, 
indeed,  to  some  extent  been  tried  already  in  France;  and  its 
connection  with  the  ancien  regime  has  led  the  monarchist  party 
to  lend  it  a  somewhat  eager  support. ^''^  But  territorial  decen- 
tralisation does  not  touch  the  real  root  of  the  problem.  The 
real  question  to  be  resolved  is  that  of  internal  organisation 
within  the  different  groups  themselves.  Decentralisation  of  a 
purely  territorial  kind  is  no  guarantee  of  autonomy.  Local 
control  might  be  as  difficult  and  static  as  centralised  control. 
The  desire  of  the  syndicalist  is  different.  He  urges  that  the 
business  of  government  has  now  become  so  complex  that  it 
cannot  maintain  at  once  unity  of  purpose  and  unity  of  method. 
The  explanation  that  the  interest  of  the  state  is  single,  does 
not,  even  if  it  be  true,  involve  the  need  of  unified  administra- 
tion. On  the  contrary,  the  administration  of  the  state  cannot 
be  satisfactory  so  long  as  it  is  so  organized.  What  is  desired 
is  to  confide  the  operation  of  the  different  branches  of  the 
state  to  technical  services  acting  under  government  control, 

But  that  control  would  be  a  declaration  of  purpose  and  no 
more.  Its  actual  execution  would  be  the  business  of  the  de- 
partment concerned.  Administrative  autonomy  would  thus 
become  real  and  effective.  The  department  would  execute  a 
law  for  government  exactly  as  a  contractor  builds  a  ship  for  the 
admiralty.  It  would  know  what  was  required  and  take  the 
necessary  measures.  But  its  life  would  be  self-determined. 
Its  method  of  response  would  be  spontaneous  and  not  auto- 
matic. It  would  realise  the  spirit  Rousseau  envisaged  when  he 
made  the  social  contract  binding  because  it  was   mutual.^"* 

1°^  Cf.  above  all  J.  Paul  Boncour  and  Charles  Maurras,  "Un  Nouveau 
D^bat  sur  la  Decentralisation"  passim.  A  curious  book  by  H.  Cellerier, 
"La  Politique  Federaliste"  has  much  of  interest  on  this  point.  The  short 
remarks  of  M.  Duguit,  Droit  Social,  Droit  Individuel,  p.  144  f,  give  the 
pith  of  the  matter;  and  M.  Charles  Brun,  "Le  R6gionalisme"  is  a  useful 
summary  of  the  whole  attitude. 

"8  "Contrat  Social,"  II,  IV. 


AUTHORITY   IN  THE   MODERN   STATE        351 

For  the  worker  who  had  a  certain  power  of  independent  re- 
sponsibility would  obtain,  in  such  a  system,  exactly  that  psy- 
chological situation  which  makes .  administration  a  human 
thing.  He  would  take  part  in  deliberation.  He  would  have 
ample  means  of  discussion,  of  suggestion,  of  experiment.  His 
task  would  become  democratic  even  while  it  remained  profes- 
sional, simply  because  the  compulsion  of  a  purpose  to  be  ful- 
filled would  not,  by  its  method,  obscure  the  possibility  of  a 
free  co-operation  in  its  fulfillment. ^^^ 

It  is  natural  enough  that  where  the  evolution  that  is  thus 
envisaged  is  itself  but  on  the  threshold  of  its  first  dumb  begin- 
nings, detailed  plans  should  be  lacking.  After  all,  this  is  not 
an  evolution  that  will  be  accompHshed  in  a  moment  of  time. 
It  is  bound  to  proceed  by  stages,  and  to  be  temporarily  deter- 
mined by  the  fluctuations  of  its  failures  and  successes.  Whether, 
for  example,  promotion  would  be  self-regulating,  or  a  matter 
of  internal  choice,  or  of  election  by  the  members  of  the  particu- 
lar service,  is  not  a  matter  for  deliberate  prophecy.  Most  of 
the  leaders  of  the  movement  have  been  wisely  careful  to  ab- 
stain from  it.  That  upon  which  they  have  mainly  laid  insist- 
ence, from  their  standpoint  assuredly  with  commonsense,  is 
the  fact  of  autonomy.  What  they  have  emphasised  is  the  fact 
that  this  autonomy  must  act  as  the  destroyer  of  what  is  unac- 
ceptable in  the  modern  hierarchical  system.  Above  all,  they 
have  pointed  out  that  self-regulation  is  the  only  effective  guar- 
antee of  equal  opportunity.  What  has  been  admirably  termed 
an  inexorable  subalternism  is  impossible  where  the  administra- 
tion is  in  fact  a  republic,  imbued  at  every  stage  with  the  demo- 
cratic spirit.  The  conduct  of  the  service  will  be  better  simply 
because  men  will  obey  with  greater  willingness  a  chief  whose 
position  is  itself  the  proof  of  competence  than  one  of  whose 
powers  they  have  had  no  reasonable  demonstration. 

The  aim  is  not  the  aboUtion  of  society.  The  syndicalist 
does  not  wish  to  make  the  administration  a  closed  system  im- 
permeable to  outside  influence  and  outside  control.  To  give 
the  schools  to  the  teachers,  the  postal  service  to  the  postal 
workers  in  full  ownership  is  a  solution  that  only  a  few  of  the 
more  extreme  enthusiasts  have  claimed.     For  they  are  suffi- 

"'  Cf.  Berthod,  Revue  Politique  et  Parlementaire,  March  1906,  p.  428. 


352        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

ciently  alive  to  IMr.  Wallas'  grave  warning"^  not  to  desire  a 
restoration  of  that  feudal  structure  which  sought  to  solve  the 
problem  of  society  by  the  unthinldng  and  purposeless  multi- 
plication of  groups.  They  recognize  that  society  has  its  place 
in  every  human  equation,  and  that,  as  a  consequence,  it  has 
a  right  to  an  indirect  control  over  everything  that  is  related 
to  a  social  function.  The  teachers,  for  example,  have  not 
hesitated  to  ask  for  the  assistance  of  parents  in  the  redaction 
of  their  educational  programmes.^^^  The  very  method  of  or- 
ganisation adopted  by  the  Confederation  Generale  du  Travail 
is  in  fact  a  guarantee  against  the  dangers  of  separatism.^^ 
Indeed,  as  M.  Leroy  has  aptly  pointed  out,^^^  the  very  situation 
of  the  workers  makes  a  federal  structure  as  necessary  as  the 
bourgeois  organisation  of  society  demands  a  centralised  sys- 
tem. The  complete  independence  of  any  department  would  be 
strictly  limited  to  those  problems  which  do  not  directly  touch 
the  business  of  any  other.  Where  common  problems  arise, 
they  must  be  settled  by  common  decision.  The  state,  in  some 
form  or  other,  must  persist  to  protect  the  common  interest, 
and  it  must  retain  a  certain  measure  of  power  for  that  purpose. 
There  are  some,  indeed,  who  would  make  wages  and  prices  a 
matter  for  general  control;  and  M.  Thomas  has  lent  the  great 
weight  of  his  authority  to  the  suggestion  that  the  interest  of 
the  consumer  must  obtain  adequate  representation  at  every 
stage  of  the  new  administrative  process. ^^^ 

The  problem  of  the  strike  then  remains.  It  is  clear  enough 
that  the  operation  of  a  public  service  must  be  in  the  general 

""  "The  Great  Society,"  p.  324  f.  On  the  place  of  the  state  in  the  most 
recent  system  of  social  reconstruction  cf.  Orage  (ed.)  "National  Guilds," 
150,  263,  and  Cole,  "Self-government  in  Industry,"  esp.,  Ch.  III. 

1"  Resolution  of  the  Lyons  Congress,  1908.  Cf .  Laurier,  "Les  Instituteurs 
et  Le  Syndicahsme"  (1908). 

"2  The  best  account  of  its  structure  is  in  Lcoy,  "LaCoutumeOuvriere," 
pp. 481-575.  Cf.  also  A.  Pawlowski,  "La Confederation  G6n6rale  du  Travail." 
The  real  secret  of  the  difference  between  American  trade-unionism  and  that 
of  France  will  be  apparent  to  anyone  who  examines  the  structure  and  pur- 
pose of  the  kindred  groups  in  either  country. 

"^  "Les  Tran.sformations  de  la  Puissance  Publique,"  pp.  272,  278. 

*"  Revue  Socialiste,  Oct.  1905,  cf.  the  very  able  article  by  M.  Bourget, 
Revue  Politique  et  Parlementaire,  1908,  p.  365. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        353 

interest  of  society.  If  its  care  is  entrusted  to  the  members  of 
that  service  is  the  suspension  of  work  at  all  capable  of  justifi- 
cation? If  the  operation  of  the  state  is  put  into  the  hands  of 
its  servants  is  not  that  autonomy  the  correlative  of.  a  respon- 
sibility for  which  there  must  be  adequate  guarantees?  It  is 
difficult  to  avoid  this  conclusion.  "It  is  simply  elementary 
prudence,"  says  M.  Hauriou,"^  "that  the  relation  with  the 
public,  above  all  upon  the  fundamental  problem  .of  responsi- 
bility, should  not  be  broken."  It  is  surely  obvious  that  the 
privilege  of  autonomy  logically  implies  the  acceptance  of  the 
purpose  for  which  that  responsibility  is  given.  Once  the  pro- 
fessional group  is  given  the  means  of  independent  action,  it 
must  be  fully  and  stringently  responsible  for  the  causes  of  its 
acts.^^®  That  syndicalists  are  but  little  inclined,  at  present,  to 
admit  the  extension  of 'the  corporate  responsibility  of  their 
groups  does  not  touch  the  real  point  at  issue.  For  the  narrow- 
ness of  their  responsibility  is,  for  the  moment,  simply  a  weapon 
forged  to  meet  a  special  industrial  situation.  Once  the  cause 
for  that  narrowness  is  removed,  there  is  no  reason  for  such  re- 
striction to  continue.  The  state  could  not  confide  the  inter- 
ests of  society  to  men  who  would  not  accept  the  responsibilities 
qftheir  trusteeship. 

V.    THE  ATTACK  OF  THE  JURISTS 

It  was  inevitable  that  such  an  attitude  should  provoke  a  violent 
hostility.  The  dogmas  it  attacks  are  too  consecrated  by  his- 
toric tradition  to  surrender  at  all  easily  to  an  opposition  in 
part,  at  least,  the  product  of  an  ideology.  The  changes 'it  in- 
volves are  too  far-reaching  to  be  accepted  without  criticism  by 
the  conservative  forces  of  the  state.  And,  after  all,  such  an- 
tagonism is  natural  enough.  For  the  dogmas  that  administra- 
tive syndicalism  has  endeavored  to  undermine  have  behind 
them  this  justification  that  they  are  the  source *from  which  the 

"6  Cf.  his  note  in  Sirey,  1908,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  83. 

"«Cf.  Rolland,  Revue  de  Droit  Public  1909,  p.  301.  Duguit,  "Droit 
Social,  Droit  Individuel,"  p.  147.  M.  Hauriou's  remarks  are  very  striking, 
"Principes  de  Droit  Public"  (ed.  of  1916),  p.  745  f.  For  the  theoretic  basis 
of  vicarious  liability  see  my  papers  in  29,  Harv.  L.  Rev.  404  f,  and  26, 
Yale  Law  Journal,  105  ff. 


354        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

modern  state  has  derived  its  strength.  The  two  great  theories 
of  sovereignty  and  the  unitary  state  are,  for  the  most  part, 
the  offspring  of  the  great  controversy  between  church  anti 
state,  matured  by  the  influence  of  the  classical  jurisprudence 
of  Rome."^  They  are  the  weapons  whereby  the  state  attained 
its  freedom  from  ecclesiastical  trammels.  And  they  are  even . 
more  than  that.  For,  with  the  growing  independence  of  the 
civil  power,  it  was  possible  to  transfer  the  seat  of  sovereignty 
from  monarch  to  people.  National  sovereignty  thus  came  to 
mean  something  akin  to  the  vindication  of  popular  freedom. 
To  attack  it  w^as  to  imperil  the  progress  for  which  the  Revolu- 
tion stood  as  the  proof  and  symbol. 

Nor  was  the  history  of  the  unitary  state  less  striking.  The 
great  danger  from  which,  in  its  recent  history,  France  has 
suffered  is  the  diverse  allegiance  of  its  citizens.  There  were 
many  whose  membership  of  the  nation  did  not  seem  to  involve 
them  in  loyalty  to  the  Republic;  and  they  did  not  hesitate  to  find, 
sometimes  in  Rome,  sometimes  at  the  half-tragic  court  of  some 
barely  remembered  royal  exile,  the  real  dwelUng-place  of  their 
affection.  There  was  thus  a  danger  to  be  confronted  external 
to  French  society.  Concentration  of  power  might  then,  with 
some  show  of  reason,  be  deemed  a  vital  thing.  If  a  citizen 
did  not  stand  by  the  Republic,  if  the  Republic  did  not  possess 
the  power  to  make  upon  him  the  fullest  demand,  its  survival 
was,  to  say  the  least,  uncertain.  Its  sovereignty  was  strikingly 
asserted;  the  fact  of  unity  was  at  every  point  displayed.  It 
was  not,  therefore,  difficult  to  charge  administrative  syndicaUsm 
with  a  purpose  that  might  well  destroy  the  state.  It  would 
render  vain  the  whole  purpose  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
was  the  coronation  of  anarchic  effort;  and  compromise  with  so 
sinister  a  movement  was  thus  almost  logically  deemed  fruitless. 

Such,  for  the  most  part,  has  been  the  spirit  in  which  admin- 
istrative syndicalism  has  been  met.  It  is  an  opposition  that 
is  rarely  constructive  in  character.  It  tends  to  take  its  stand 
less  upon  the  analysis  of  future  possibilities  than  upon  the 
adequacy  of  the  present  inheritance.  But,  in  sober  truth,  that 
is  to  say  no  more  than  that  it  at  no  point  fully  meets  the  effort 
of  the  fonctionnaire  towards  the  transformation  of  the  modern 

'"  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  pp.  27-9. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        355 

state.  What  it  has  rather  tried  to  do  is  to  demonstrate  that 
such  purpose  is  illegal  and  unpractical.  It  is  held  illegal  by  the 
lawyer  because  the  categories  of  nineteenth  century  jurispru- 
dence have  no  place  for  so  novel  an  effort.  It  is  held  unprac- 
tical by  the  statesman  because  it  is  a  problem  he  has  never 
before  confronted.  To  the  central  principles  it  enunciates,  they 
unite  to  return  an  unquahfied  negative. 

There  are,  of  course,  both  in  law  and  in  politics,  exceptions 
to  this  general  rule.  There  are  some  who  have  been  able  to 
see  that  the  present  conception  of  the  state  is  in  no  sense  per- 
manent, and  it  is,  for  them,  natural  to  expect  that  the  develop- 
ment of  its  jurisprudence  will  be  coeval  with  its  political  evo- 
lution. There  are  statesmen  who  have  been  able  to  realise  that 
administrative  conservatism  is  already  obsolete.  The  crisis  of 
the  public  services  has  gone  too  deeply  to  the  root  of  the  body 
politic  to  be  solved  by  an  uncompromising  denial.  The  more 
timid  spirits  have,  as  is  natural,  suggested  the  wisdom  of  com- 
promise. And,  in  the  sense  that  reforms  will  do  much  to 
remove  the  bitterness  that  has  been  manifested  on  both  sides 
during  the  past  ten  years,  reform  has  a  merit  that  is  undenia- 
ble. But  the  claims,  both  of  one  side  and  the  other,  are  too 
divergent  to  admit  of  compromise.  There  is  no  half-way  house 
effectively  to  be  occupied  between  the  present  administrative 
control  and  the  full  independence  demanded  by  the  civil  serv- 
ice. The  criticisms,  indeed,  are  important;  for  they  show, 
alike  from  the  standpoints  of  legal  and  political  philosophy, 
the  defences  of  modern  authoritarianism.  And  while  they  are 
in  essence  distinct,  they  both  have  the  merit  of  an  obvious  sim- 
plicity. They  thus  serve  to  throw  into  a  clearer  light  the 
significance  of  the  competing  claims. 

The  juristic  attack  upon  administrative  syndicalism  origi- 
nates in  the  attempt  to  find  a  legal  basis  for  the  claims  of  the 
civil  service.  There  are  some  who  have  not  hesitated  to  assert 
that  the  movement  is  in  no  sense  opposed  to  the  existing  law. 
On  the  whole,  the  lawyers  have  united  to  reject  that  assertion. 
While  they  are  unanimous  in  their  agreement  that  the  law  of 
1901  provides  a  clear  path  of  association  which  the  civil  servant 
may  take,  they  are  almost  equally  unanimous  that  the  law  of 
1884  applies  to  a  type  of  professional  association  with  which 


356        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

the  civil  service  can  have  no  connection.  Their  fundamental 
criticism  is  based  on  an  interpretation  of  the  nature  of  the 
state  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  relation  to  it  of  the  civil  servant 
on  the  other.  They  insist  that  the  regime  of  administration 
can  at  no  single  point,  except  one,  be  approximated  to  the 
modern  system  of  industrial  organisation.  It  of  course  logically 
follows  that  the  position  of  the  civil  servant  is  in  no  sense 
similar  to  that  of  the  worker.  The  attempt  is  made  to  show 
that  once  we  are  in  the  domain  of  state-activity  we  are  in  the 
presence  of  special  facts  to  which  the  ordinary  formulae  of 
private  law  are  inapplicable.  From  jurisprudence,  therefore, 
administrative  syndicalism  has  nothing  to  expect. 

It  seems  legally  unquestionable  that  so  far  as  the  relation  of 
the  laws  of  1884  and  1901  really  affects  the  fundamental  issue, 
the  legal  critics  are  absolutely  in  the  right.  There  is  not  a 
shred  of  evidence  that  it  was  ever  intended  to  apply  the  law 
of  1884  to  members  of  the  civil  service;  rather,  on  the  contrary, 
does  it  seem  to  have  been  the  express  intention  of  the  legisla- 
ture to  exclude  them  from  it."^  The  law  of  1884  was  simply 
an  effort  to  equalise  the  bargaining  power  of  labour  to  that  of 
capital ;  and  those  who  passed  it  no  more  dreamed  of  its  appli- 
cation to  the  problems  of  the  state  than  did  Mr.  Justice  Holmes 
when  he  enunciated  a  similar  proposition."^  Indeed,  the  syn- 
dicalists themselves  have  admitted,  on  occasion,  that  the  civil 
service  has  a  privileged  position. ^^o  '^qi^  indeed,  that  the  argu- 
ment which  denies  that  the  state  can  be  equated  with  the 
private  employer  has  been  very  vigorously  supported.  For,  if 
it  is  true  that  the  minister  is  limited  by  his  dependence  upon 
the  legislature,  that  is  more  and  more  coming  to  be  the  case 
with  the  private  employer,  especially  in  those  industries  where 
the  pubHc  interest  is  most  directly  concerned  ;^2^  and  the  result 

"^  Cf.  Mermeix,  "Le  Syndicalisme  centre  le  Socialisme,"  p.  83. 

"9  Coppage  v.  Kansas,  236  U.  S.  I,  26. 

^^°  Cf.  Beaubois,  Mouvemenl  Socialiste,  1905,  p.  430,  and  Montbruneaud 
in  ibid.,  p.  295. 

'2'  The  action  of  Congress  in  the  passage  of  the  Adamson  Law  is,  of 
course,  a  very  striking  example  of  this.  On  the  theoretic  issues  involved 
cf.  for  Anglo-Saxon  countries,  the  remarkable  paper  of  Mr.  E.  A.  Adler 
in  28  and  29,  Harv.  L.  Rev. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        357 

of  a  ministerial  regulation  in  regard  to  the  civil  service,  is  not 
very  different,  whatever  its  nature,  from  the  collective  agree- 
ment that  is  coming  to  be  characteristic  of  modern  business. 
Nor  does  M.  Briand's  insistence  that  the  state  does  not  possess 
the  elasticity  of  initiative  by  which  private  industry  is  distin- 
guished in  any  way  destroy  the  vaHdity  of  the  comparison. ^^^ 

Not,  indeed,  that  the  analogy  is  in  any  sense  fundamental 
to  tliis  issue.  The  main  fact,  after  all,  is  that  the  Penal  Code 
still  makes  it  a  criminal  offence  for  civil  servants  to  plan  a 
strike  ;^23  ^nd  this  has  been  more  than  once  ratified  by  the 
courts  ;^2*  nor  have  they  hesitated  to  declare  illegal  the  forma- 
tion of  such  trade-unions  in  the  civil  service  as  they  have  had 
occasion  to  judge.^^^  Nor  is  parHamentary  opinion  less  clear. 
The  two  efforts  that  have  been  made  to  give  teachers  a  right 
to  form  unions  have  not  even  been  discussed.^^^  A  similar 
proposal  in  regard  to  the  medical  profession  made  in  1894  was 
expressly  negatived,  at  the  urgent  request  of  M.  Loubet,  then 
President  of  the  Council,  on  the  specific  ground  that  doctors 
are  continually  performing  services  which  bring  them  into 
relation  with  government.  Where  permission  has  been  given, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  state-railways,  and  the  state  tobacco 
monopoly,  it  is  simply  because,  in  that  aspect,  the  state  has 
definitely  undertaken  the  functions  usually  performed  by  a 
private  employer.^^r  ]y[  Waldeck-Rousseau,  the  author  of  the 
law  of  1884,  has  expressly  declared  that  he  did  not  have  the 
civil  service  in  view  when  he  proposed  it,^^  and  M.  Clemenceau, 
one  of  its  leading  advocates,  has  equally  insisted  that  it  had 
in  view  only  those  whose  wages  are  subject  to  the  variations  of 
economic  law.^^^ 

There  remains  the  law  of  1901;  and,  despite  the  criticisms 

122  Journal  Officiel,  May  14,  1907. 

123  Code  Penale.  art,  126. 

"*  Duguit,  "Traite  de  Droit  Constitutionel,"  I,  519  f. 

125  Cf .  Gazelle  des  Tribunaux,  July  9,  1903,  Revue  des  Grands  Proces 
Contemporains,  1909,  no.  II,  contains  a  full  report  of  the  leading  case. 

126  Journal  Officiel,  March  24,  1886,  Ibid,  1890,  p.  1533. 

127  Cf.  M.  Kamel  in  Journal  Officiel,  May  23,  1894. 

128  Cf .  Mouvemenl  Socialiste,  March,  1905,  p.  320. 

'29  Cf .  his  reply  to  the  teachers'  manifesto  cited  above. 


358        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

of  M.  Berthel6my/'°  it  seems  clear  that  it  is  sufficiently  broad 
to  cover  the  associations  formed  within  the  civil  service.^^^ 
The  lawj'ers,  moreover,  have  been  eager  to  point  out  that  there 
is  little  or  no  juridical  difference  between  the  two  systems  of 
coalition;  for  the  one  serious  benefit  the  trade-union  seems  to 
possess,  the  power  to  receive  legacies  and  gifts,  is  hardly  very 
likely  to  be  exercised  by  the  civil  servants  ;^^2  and  M.  Saint- 
Leon  has  shown  that  even  this  difficulty  can  be  avoided.^'' 
Yet  the  invalidity  of  the  legal  argument  rests  here  precisely 
on  the  fact  that  it  remains  merely  legal.  For  the  real  question 
involved  is  not  legal  at  all,  but  psychological,  and  the  main 
advantage  that  the  advocates  of  administrative  syndicalism 
seem  to  expect  would  be  purely  moral  in  character  ;^^^  for,  as 
the  great  strike  of  1909  made  apparent,  a  mere  matter  of  words 
will  not  prevent  the  use  of  weapons  deemed,  for  any  reason, 
desirable.  For  the  real  purpose  of  this  insistence  on  the  law 
of  1884  is  the  advantage  it  would  give  of  contact  with  the 
working-class.  It  is  one  more  proof  of  the  fact  that  the  move- 
ment has  become  far  wider  than  a  simple  protest  against  par- 
ticular abuses  of  a  definite  authority  and  has  broadened  into 
an  attempt  to  dethrone  a  whole  system  from  its  controlling 
eminence.  That  is  why  the  choice  of  methods  will  have  more 
than  verbal  results;  for  to  admit  that  the  civil  servant  can  form 
a  trade-union  is  to  give  him  increased  opportunity  of  empha- 
sising the  relation  of  his  demands  to  those  of  the  workers. 

The  lawyers  have  not,  of  course,  failed  to  perceive  the  bur- 
den of  this  manoeuvre,  and  it  is  in  this  aspect  that  they  have 
erected  their  ablest  means  of  opposition  to  administrative  syn- 
dicalism. For,  juristically  at  any  rate,  the  real  problem  in- 
volved is  that  of  the  legal  status  of  the  civil  servant.  If  his 
relation  to  the  state  is  one  of  contract,  it  is  clear  that  the 
problem  admits  of  an  obvious  solution;  for  once  we  are  dealing 

"0  Revue  de  Paris,  Feb.  15,  1906,  p.  883. 

"1  Cf.  M.  Hauriou's  admirable  note,  Sirey,  1909,  3,  17. 

"^  Cf.  Revue  Generale  de  V Adminislration,  1906,  I,  203. 

"'  Cf.  his  interesting  comparison  in  "Annales  du  Mus6e  Social,"  1906 
p.  61,  and  the  paper  of  M.  Perrinjaquet  in  Annales  de  Faculte  droit 
d'Aix  1910,  p.  133. 

"4  Cf.  Bougie,  "Syndicalism  et  D6mocratie,"  p.  27  f. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        359 


with  contract  it  is  legitimate  to  apply  the  ordinary  rules  of  pri- 
vate law.  If  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  matter  of  public  law,  if 
it  bears  upon  the  nature  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  state,  then 
it  is  clear  that  the  position  of  the  civil  servant  is  specialised  in 
character.  Or,  as  has  been  urged,  it  may  well  be  that  the 
state  is  only  in  part  a  specialised  institution  in  that  aspect,  it 
is  only  those  who  work  within  the  area  of  its  specialised  activity 
who  are  subject  to  a  special  law.^^^ 

Naturally  enough,  the  advocates  of  administrative  syndical- 
ism have  insisted  that  the  relation  between  the  civil  servant 
and  the  government  is  one  of  contract.  His  position  would 
then  be  analogous  to  that  of  the  worker  in  private  industry 
and  most  of  our  difficulties  would  have  been  solved.  But  the 
question  is,  in  fact,  less  simple.  A  civil  servant  cannot  resign, 
or,  at  least,  the  government  need  not  accept  his  resignation.^^^ 
The  civil  servant  who  throws  up  his  post  to  go  on  strike  re- 
mains a  civil  servant  despite  himself  until  it  should  please  the 
authorities  to  dismiss  him.^"  If  this  is  a  contract,  it  is  clearly 
contract  of  a  kind  unknown  in  private  law.  A  contract  ought 
to  be  the  source  of  rights;  and  it  is  clear  that  against  a  govern- 
ment which  can  change  his  position,  his  salary,  his  work,  or 
even  dismiss  him  at  will,  he  is  not  protected  in  any  contractual 
fashion.  It  is,  of  course,  true  that  he  has  what  may  be  called 
a  mediately  contractual  position;  that  is  to  say  the  ministerial 
regulations  are  binding  upon  the  parties  concerned.  But  since 
they  can  be  altered  at  will,  that  is  no  great  guarantee.  The 
will  of  the  state  as  expressed  by  its  ministers  clearly  predomi- 
nates in  the  situation. 

Nor  is  the  problem  made  easy  by  distinguishing  between 
different  kinds  of  civil  servants,  as  M.  Berthelemy  has  urged 
us  to  do.    Any  one  can  see  that  the  position  of  a  judge  is  suffi- 

"5  This  is  the  well-known  distinction  of  M.  Berthelemy.  "Droit  Ad- 
ministratif"  (5  ed.),  p.  78,  between  fonctionnaires  d'autorite  and  fonction- 
naires  de  gestion.  Cf.  Nezard,  "Th^orie  juridique  de  la  fonction  pubhque," 
p.  461 ;  and  for  criticism  of  it  see  Duguit,  "Traits  de  Droit  Constitutionnel," 
I,  429  f,  where,  as  I  think,  its  impossibility  is  effectively  demonstrated. 

"« Rolland,  "Revue  de  Droit  Public,"  1907,  p.  722.  The  analogous 
position  of  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons  is,  of  course,  suggestive. 

1"  Cf.  the  note  of  M.  Hauriou  in  Sirey,  1909,  3.  145. 


360        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

ciently  different  from  that  of  a  worker  in  a  state  match-factory 
as  to  give  each  different  rights  and  duties;  but  to  draw  a  broad 
hne  between  the  two  becomes  impossible  immediately  we  take 
certain  critical  instances.  A  prefect,  for  example,  is  a  civil 
servant  who  is  charged  by  delegation  with  the  exercise  of  cer- 
tain sovereign  powers;  but  he  is  also  the  recipient  of  orders  which 
it  is  his  duty  unquestioningly  to  fulfil.  Mining  engineers  are, 
for  the  most  part,  technical  experts  who  have  no  connection 
with  the  semi-political  problems  of  the  service;  but  where  they 
draw  up  notes  on  the  contravention  of  government  rules  in  the 
mines,  their  position  is  immediately  changed.  Nor  is  it  possible 
to  obtain  any  large  measure  of  agreement  as  to  where  technical 
service  ends  and  the  detention  of  a  part  of  pubUc  power  begins. 
M.  Hauriou  does  not  doubt  that  teachers  and  postmen  are 
fonctionnaires  d'autorite;  M.  Fontaine  hotly  denies  it.^^^  One 
government  official  seems  to  imagine  that  any  civil  servant 
who  reports  infractions  of  the  law  is  a  holder  of  some  delegated 
portion  of  sovereign  authority. ^^^  The  distinction  is  thus  obvi- 
ously too  difficult  to  make  its  application  as  helpful  as  is  sug- 
gested by  its  external  simplicity. 

''  If  the  legal  assumptions  are  admitted,  they  constitute,  then, 
a  complete  refutation  of  the  syndicalist  thesis.  They  imply 
the  satisfactory  proof  that  the  relation  is  not  in  any  real  sense 
contractual.  The  lawyers,  however,  have  been,  perhaps,  some- 
what less  happy  in  the  theories  by  which  they  attempt  to 
replace  the  notion  of  contract.  No  one — at  least  in  France^^" 
— now  accepts  the  principle  of  Rousseau  that  the  citizen,  hav- 
ing surrendered  all  his  rights  to  the  state,  must  undertake  at 
its  behest  whatever  functions  it  should  choose  to  ordain."^ 
Mr.  Hauriou  has  suggested  what  is,  in  reality,  a  feudal  notion  of 
this  relationship.  He  regards  the  tenure  of  office  as  a  kind  of 
fragment  of  the  public  domain,  and  he  suggests  that  the  true 

"8  Sirey,  1907,  3,  49. 

139  Cf.  the  report  of  M.  Malepeyre,  D.P.,  1905,  I,  259  "(L' Affaire 
Belloche)." 

""  But  it  is  accepted  by  many  very  reputable  German  authorities,  cf . 
Perthes,  "Die  Staatsdienst  in  Preussen,"  p.  55,  and  the  authorities  there 
cited. 

1"  "Contrat  Social,"  Bk.  II,  Ch.  IV. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        361 

analogy  is  that  of  the  feudal  lord,  investing  his  vassal  with  a 
fief. ^^2  That  public  office  was,  in  medieval  times,  essentially  a 
property-right  is  a  fact  which  admits  of  little  denial;"^  but  it 
does  not  fit  the  facts  of  the  modern  situation.  The  hereditary 
butler  was,  after  all,  a  household  servant  of  the  crown,  and 
the  concept  of  property  is,  in  that  aspect,  intelligible  enough. 
But  the  modern  civil  servant  owes  service  to  the  head  of  the 
state  in  his  official  "and  not  his  personal"  capacity.  The  feudal 
lord  gave  to  his  tenant  a  portion  of  sovereignty;  and  certainly 
where,  as  in  modern  French  law,  the  inalienability  of  sover- 
eignty has  been,  since  the  Revolution,  little  less  than  a  religious 
dogma,  such  indivisibility  cannot  be  equated  with  a  property- 
concept. ^^^  Nor  is  M.  Larnaude's  theory  that  the  situation  is 
entirely  specialised  and  can  be  explained,  like  the  bond  created 
by  naturalisation,  by  a  presumption  of  lex  s'pecialis}^^  For 
lex  impUes  statute,  and  the  idea  of  a  statute  is  the  merest  fic- 
tion. Nor  is  the  analogy  of  naturalisation  very  happy;  for 
if  ever  there  was  a  legal  relation  in  which  contract  was  implied, 
it  is  surely  the  relation  created  by  the  adoption  of  citizenship. 
To  explain  the  problem  by  insisting  that  it  is  exceptional  is, 
in  reality  to  urge  that  it  cannot  be  explained  at  all.  Such  a 
mystery  might  well  account  for  the  advent  of  administrative 
syndicalism,  but  it  would  hardly  meet  its  problems. 

M.  Duguit  explains  the  situation  in  a  fashion  which,  while 
analogous,  at  the  same  time  attempts  to  meet  the  difficulties 
involved  in  the  hypothesis  of  exceptionality.^*^  In  his  view, 
the  whole  field  of  administration  is  settled  by  statute  or  by 
general  ministerial  regulations  which  are  akin  by  nature  to 

i«  Sirey,  1899,  3,  6. 

"3  My  friend  Prof.  Mcllwain  wiU  shortly  publish  a  paper  in  which  this 
fact  is  demonstrated  for  the  whole  of  medieval  English  history.  He  has 
already  hinted  at  it  in  his  paper  on  judicial  tenure  in  the  American  Pol.  Sci. 
Rev.  for  May,  1913. 

"^  Cf.  Duguit,  "L'Etat,  les  Gouvernants  et  les  Agents,"  p.  392,  for  a 
very  complete  criticism. 

i«  Revue  Penilentaire,  1906,  p.  830. 

"^  Duguit,  "L'Etat,  les  Gouvernants  et  les  Agents,"  p.  4,  13  ff. 
Cf.  "Bcrthelemy,  Revue  de  Droit  Public,"  1904,  p.  20  f,  and  Jeze,  ihid., 
p.  517,  csp.  the  latter  for  a  very  clear  exposition  of  this  attitude. 


362        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

statute.  We  have,  in  fact,  a  purely  objective  law  which  settles 
the  whole  relationship  with  regard  to  the  general  end  that 
administration  is  to  serve.  Nomination  is  a  power  of  bringing 
some  citizen  within  the  purview  of  this  law  in  order  that  he 
may  fulfil  its  purposes.  The  act  of  nomination  derives  its 
whole  force  therefrom;  and  the  acceptance  of  nomination  sim- 
ply completes  the  process.  Yet  it  must  surely  be  admitted 
that  the  theory  is  far  less  satisfactory  than  appears  on  the 
surface.  If  the  nominee  may  reject  the  preferred  position  it  is 
surely  therein  imphed  that  whatever  takes  place  has  about  it 
a  contractual  nature.  The  nominee  is  agreeing  to  submit  him- 
self to  the  regulations  of  the  service  in  return  for  the  enjoyment 
of  a  position  he  desires.  He  may  not  have  named  the  conditions 
of  his  employment.  The  contract,  that  is  to  say,  may  be  uni- 
lateral in  character.  But  it  still  remains  a  contract;  and  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  this  element  can,  in  the  circumstances,  be 
explained  away. 

For  the  simple  fact  is  that  all  these  legal  theories  are,  from 
the  standpoint  of  administrative  syndicalism,  vitiated  by  one 
grave  defect.  They  are  all  built  exactly  upon  that  conception 
of  the  state  against  which  the  fonctionnaire  has  made  his  vehe- 
ment protest.  They  do  not  take  account  of  the  psychological 
fact  that  if  the  situation  of  the  civil  servant  has  a  certain  spe- 
cialised character,  it  is  yet  a  character  from  which  the  concep- 
tion of  a  contract  can  hardly  be  excluded.  The  state  may  say 
that  it  makes  no  contract;  but  if  it  fails  to  provide  what  its 
servants  deem  reasonable  conditions  of  labour  they  will  not 
work  for  it.  It  may  theoretically  demonstrate  that  its  will 
dominates  the  situation,  but  the  fact  will  still  remain  that  the 
will  of  its  servants  is  not  less  relevant.  For  while  they  identify 
themselves  in  a  special  sense  with  the  state,  they  do  not  so 
finally  merge  their  personalities  with  its  own  as  to  be  incapable 
of  active  opposition  to  it.  The  state  may  make  its  laws  for  their 
governance;  but  if  it  finds  that  they  refuse  obedience  to  its  laws 
they  will  prove  of  no  avail.  It  may  proclaim  its  sovereignty; 
but  a  sovereignty  that  cannot  win  the  assent  of  those  who  are 
to  be  the  subjects  of  its  control  is  not  impressive. 

And  the  change  in  the  status  of  the  civil  servant  is  surely 
indicative  of  an  important  innovation.     More  and  more  the 


AUTHORITYINTHEMODERNSTATE        363 

status  is  coming  to  be  settled  as  the  result  of  discussion  and 
bargaining  in  which  the  civil  servant  takes  his  full  share.  The 
French  Railways  are  governed  by  an  agreement  which  is  the 
result  of  joint  deliberation  between  the  political  and  adminis- 
trative personnel. ^^^  That  is  the  beginning  of  an  evolution  of 
which  the  end  may  well  be  the  erection  of  self-government 
within  each  department.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  status 
so  determined  must  receive  the  official  sanction  either  of  the 
minister  or  of  Parliament.  It  draws  its  sustenance  from  an 
enabling  statute.  But  that  enabling  statute  is  itself  based 
upon  a  prior  agreement.  It  does  not  create  so  much  as  regis- 
trate.  A  sovereignty  that  merely  accepts  what  has  been  agreed 
upon  outside  of  itself  is,  it  may  be  suggested,  a  sovereignty  that 
has  been  deprived  of  its  sting.  ^^^ 

The  truth  is  that  the  character  which  the  lawyers  attempted 
to  attach  to  the  state  dates  from  a  time  anterior  to  the  advent 
of  democracy.  It  is  impotent  in  the  face  of  administrative 
coalescence.  It  might  work  when  the  right  of  association  had 
not  yet  so  far  advanced  as  to  give  the  civil  servant  the  oppor- 
tunity to  organize  his  corporate  interests.  But  immediately 
he  had  discovered  what  had  been  released  by  the  law  of  1901, 
the  concept  of  a  sovereign  state  which  determined  his  situation 
without  reference  to  his  wishes  and  without  the  recognition 
that  he  had  rights  it  could  not  infringe  became  impossible.  It 
was  exacting  from  him  the  surrender  of  exactly  that  which  he 
had  combined  in  order  to  attain.  The  sanction  of  law  is  not 
its  existence  but  its  ability  to  secure  assent.^^^  The  civil  servant 
refuses  to  admit  the  vast  authority  which  is  claimed  by  the 
state  simply  because  he  has  suffered  too  greatly  from  the 
effects  of  its  exercise.  He  finds  himself  in  a  position  to  bargain 
with  the  government.  Whether  the  result  of  their  joint  de- 
liberation affects  him  only,  or  involves  also  the  rest  of  the  com- 

"^Cf.  Duguit,  "Les  Transformations  du  Droit  Public,"  p.  114.  The 
system  of  self-government  instituted  in  189G  for  the  French  universities  is 
full  of  fascinating  suggestion  in  this  regard.  Cf.  Hauriou,  "Principes  de 
Droit  Pubhc"  (ed.  of  1916),  p.  745  f. 

"*  The  similar  relation  of  Congress  to  the  railway  situation  of  191()  is  of 
interest. 

'^^  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  12  f. 


364        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

munity,  the  relation  that  is  slowly  being  established  is,  clearly 
enough,  no  longer  unilateral.  Certain  states  of  fact  are  arrived 
at  by  agreement.  They  are  deferred  in  regulations.  If  in 
theory  the  state  retains  the  power  to  alter  those  regulations  in 
practice  that  power  is  as  valuable  as  the  sovereignty  of  the 
English  king.  It  is  a  tribute  to  a  great  tradition  rather  than 
an  admission  of  its  present  operation. 

And  that,  after  all,  is  only  to  say  that  the  legal  theory  which 
rejects  the  notion  of  contract  is,  by  that  definition,  an  inade- 
quate theory.  Law  cannot  persistently  neglect  the  psychology 
of  those  it  endeavours  to  control.  So  long  as  the  fonctionnaire 
refuses  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  the  government,  it  is  useless  for 
jurisprudence  to  evolve  a  theory  which  implies  his  subjection. 
Nor  does  it  matter  in  what  kind  of  subtleties  that  subjection  is 
concealed.  We  may  talk  of  an  objective  law  that  is  removed 
from  the  clash  of  personalities  and  securely  grounded  in  the 
facts  themselves.^^"  But  that,  in  the  end,  is  to  do  no  more  than 
transfer  the  discussion  to  the  nature  of  the  objective  law. 
Anyone,  for  instance,  who  reads  the  history  of  the  postal  strike 
of  1909  will  not  doubt  that  M.  Simyan's  conception  of  the 
objective  law  by  which  the  service  should  be  governed  would 
differ  very  markedly  from  that  of  M.  Pouget.  Whether  we 
found  our  demands  on  the  desire  or  the  duty  that  lies  before 
us,  we  cannot  escape  the  problem  of  rights.  The  civil  servant 
very  clearly  feels  that  he  can  make  certain  demands  which  the 
state  ought  not  to  refuse.  In  the  eighteenth  century  they  were 
a  deductive  claim;  today  they  are  an  induction  from  the  expe- 
rience of  a  bitter  illusion.  But  the  fact  still  remains  that  they 
are  rights  and,  as  such,  they  evade  the  categories  in  which 
authority  would  enshrine  them.  No  legal  argument  against 
the  claims  of  administrative  syndicalism  can  therefore  be  valid 
that  is  based  upon  the  theory  of  the  state  as  it  presents  itself 
in  the  orthodox  currency  of  today.  For,  in  the  first  place,  the 
syndicalist  would  deny  its  validity,  and,  in  the  second,  it  is 
clearly  a  theory  that  is  passing  away.  The  task  that  confronts 
the  jurist  is  still  the  same.  He  has  still  to  reconcile  adminis- 
trative autonomy  with  a  state  of  which  the  authority  is  made 
subject  to  the  strictest  limitations.     He  has  to  show  how  law 

'"  Cf.  my  note  on  M.  Duguit  in  the  Harvard  Law  Review  for  Nov.,  1917. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        365 

can  maintain  responsibility  while  it  admits  a  reasonable  inde- 
pendence. But  it  is  with  new  weapons  that  he  must  come  to 
his  task. 

VI.    THE  ATTACK  OF  THE  POLITICIANS 

It  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  so  novel  a  phenomenon  as 
administrative  syndicalism  could  meet  with  approval  from  the 
politicians.  It  was,  in  the  first  place,  too  alien  from  their  tra- 
ditional theories  of  poUtics  to  be  acceptable.  The  very  griev- 
ances of  which  it  made  complaint  were  the  outcome  of  the 
parliamentary  system.  Their  approval  of  it  would  have  in- 
volved self-condemnation;  it  would  have  been  the  tacit  admis- 
sion that  the  criticisms  passed  upon  the  system  of  which  they 
are  at  once  the  founders  and  protectors,  were  firmly  rooted  in 
reality.  Yet  a  curious  distinction  is  to  be  noted  in  the  political 
attitude.  In  principle,  it  has  proved  adamant  against  the 
introduction  of  novelty.  When  the  resources  of  argument  were 
exhausted,  resort  was  had  to  the  copious  reservoir  of  rhetoric; 
and  there  have  been  few  more  brilliant  debates  in  the  chamber 
than  those  in  which  MM.  Clemenceau  and  Briand  have  vin- 
dicated the  sovereign  state  from  the  pitiful  assault  of  its  an- 
archist detractors.  Yet  alongside  this  immovable  determina- 
tion in  theory,  there  has  gone  a  consistent  pliabiUty  in  practice. 
The  statesmen  of  France  have  never  dealt  with  f onctionnarisme ; 
but  they  have  always  been  careful  to  reckon  with  it.  They 
have  been  consistently  gentle  at  election-times;  and  their  ear- 
nest eagerness  to  find  a  basis  for  compromise  with  principles 
they  have  steadfastly  declared  impossible  has  not  been  without 
its  pathos.  It  is  a  noteworthy  distinction ;  for  it  is  the  expression 
of  a  genuine  effort  on  the  part  of  the  state  to  find  ways  and 
means  of  admitting  in  practice  the  advent  of  a  fundamental 
transformation  in  its  nature  even  while  the  terminology  of  the 
past  is  preserved.  How  far  it  is  Hkely  to  prove  a  successful 
effort  is  dubious  matter  for  the  most  dangerous  kind  of  proph- 
ecy. The  war  intervened  exactly  at  the  point  where  it  was 
beginning  to  be  possible  to  catch  the  first  clear  signs  of  the 
new  evolution;  and' the  clouds  have  not  yet  sufficiently  drifted 
to  make  again  visible  the  rays  of  the  political  sun. 


366        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

Yet  the  theory  upon  which  this  poHtical  antagonism  has 
been  founded  is,  throughout  its  history,  unmistakably  clear. 
The  nation,  in  their  view,  enjoys  a  sovereignty  which  is  com- 
plete and  in  no  degree  subject  to  limitation.  Its  personality  is 
at  every  point  superior  to  that  of  its  constituent  members. 
The  nation,  in  its  political  expression,  is  the  state;  and  thus, 
obviously  enough,  upon  the  institutional  organs  of  the  state, 
the  majesty  of  the  national  sovereignty  descends  by  delegation. 
To  threaten  the  state,  is  thus  to  strike  at  the  heart  of  the 
national  existence.  And  this  is  even  more  truly  the  case  with 
the  civil  servant  whose  very  powers  are  derived  from  his  posi- 
tion as  a  state-instrument.  He  negatives  the  whole  purpose 
of  his  existence  once  he  rebels  against  that  from  which  he  derives 
all  that  makes  him  different  from  the  ordinary  citizen.  Admin- 
istrative syndicalism  thus  becomes  a  particularly  reprehensible 
variation  upon  an  anarchic  theme.  To  make  concessions  to  it 
is  to  derogate  from  the  national  power.  A  refusal  to  bargain 
with  it  thus  becomes  the  preservation  of  all  that  makes  the 
nation  a  self-governing  instrument.  Once  concede  internal 
autonomy  and  the  national  unity  is  at  a  stroke  destroyed. 

It  is  a  simple  theory,  upon  which  every  conceivable  variation 
has  been  made.  It  seems  to  have  been  born  in  1887  with 
M.  Spuller  who,  in  a  famous  circular,^^^  insisted  that  it  was 
inconceivable  that  a  group  of  public  officials  could  enjoy  a 
corporate  personality  outside  their  membership  of  the  state. 
Twenty  years  later  the  argument  is  in  nowise  different.  "Offi- 
cials," said  M.  Rouvicr,^^^  then  Prime  Minister,  "who  exercise 
any  portion  of  sovereign  power,  are  members  only  of  one 
corporation — the  state;  and  the  state  is  the  nation  itself." 
M.  Briand  drew  the  obvious  inference  from  that  attitude. 
"What,"  he  asked, ^^^  "is  the  democratic  state?  .  .  .  Is  it 
the  government?  .  .  .  That  cannot  be  because  government 
is  only  an  agent  which  executes  orders.  .  .  .  The  civil  service 
has  against  it  the  national  representatives,  that  is  to  say  the 
nation  itself."     M.  Cl^menceau  has  pointed  what  he  regards 

'^'  Cf .  Cahen,  "Les  Fonctionnaires,"  p.  59.,  M.  Spuller  was  then  Minister 
of  Public  Instruction. 

'^^  Journal  Oficiel,  May  23,  1905. 
iM  Journal  Officiel,  May  12,  1907. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        367 

as  the  moral  of  the  argument.  "Government,"  he  said,^**  "is 
under  the  control  of  the  chamber;  the  chamber  is  controlled 
by  universal  suffrage ;  but  neither  government  nor  the  chamber 
is  under  the  control  of  the  civil  service."  The  great  postal 
strike  of  1909  did  not  suggest  any  new  synthesis  to  M.  Barthou, 
the  minister  most  concerned.  "The  postmen,"  he  told  the 
chamber,^^^  "are  in  revolt  against  you,  gentlemen,  against  the 
entire  nation,  .  .  .  what  we  have  to  determine  is  whether 
a  government  which  represents  the  sovereign  nation  can 
abandon  the  care  of  general  interests  before  a  rebelhous  civil 
service."  M.  Ribot  has  insisted  that  while  the  ordinary  citizen 
can  plan  the  transformation  of  the  state,  the  duty  of  the  pubhc 
official  is  at  all  costs  to  defend  its  present  organisation. ^^^ 
M.  Deschanel  seems  to  regard  the  civil  servant  as  the  delegate  of 
the  nation  for  the  performance  of  certain  functions;  clearly, 
therefore,  anything  that  does  not  involve  their  performance 
is  a  transgression  of  his  powers.^"  And  M.  Poincare  has  again 
and  again  uttered  the  warning  that  a  new  power,  irresponsible 
in  its  nature,  confronts  the  sovereign  nation.  He  seems  to 
consider  its  advent  as  nothing  less  than  an  attack  on  the  life 
of  the  French  republic.^^^ 

All  this,  of  course,  is  a  purely  theoretical  argument.  It 
simply  insists  that  the  authority  of  the  state  is  final  without 
at  any  point  examining  the  basis  upon  which  that  insistence  is 
founded.  It  does  not,  therefore,  meet  the  argument  of  ad- 
ministrative syndicalism;  what  it  rather  does  is  to  lay  down 
certain  counter-assumptions  of  which  the  truth  is  still  de- 
bateable.  It  does  not  seem  to  have  reahsed  that  the  fonction- 
nariste  movement  is  nothing  if  not  a  challenge  to  these  con- 
ceptions; and  it  is  not,  to  say  the  least,  particularly  helpful 
to  have  the  whole  discussion  shelved  in  this  facile  manner. 
Far  more  important  is  the  argument  derived  from  the  needs 
of  practical  administration.  Here,  at  least,  the  politicians  have 
had  a  real  case  to  urge  and  they  have  put  it  with  no  small  skill. 

1"  Ibid.,  March  13,  1908. 
'65  Ibid.,  March  19,  1909. 
156  Ibid.,  May  14,  1907. 
1*7  Ibid.,  May  12,  1907. 
158  Speech  of  April  27,  1907. 


368        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

This,  they  point  out,  is  pre-eminently  a  period  in  which  the 
functions  of  the  state  are  undergoing  continuous  extension. 
More  and  more  it  is  coming,  if  not  to  take  actual  charge,  at 
least  to  regulate,  the  conduct  of  great  departments  of  public 
life.  In  that  aspect,  the  main  problem  by  which  it  is  con- 
fronted is  to  ensure  to  its  constituents  the  regular  and  continu- 
ous operation  of  the  services  under  its  control.  Whether  it 
purveys  railway  or  postal  facilities,  whether  it  sells  matches 
or  procures  an  adequate  police,  obviously  the  one  thing  the 
public  has  a  right  to  demand  is  their  efficient  operation.  For 
where  these  services  are  managed  as  public  utihties  by  com- 
panies or  individuals  working  for  gain  a  special  system  of  law 
is  instituted  of  which  the  cardinal  point  is  the  guarantee  of 
continuity. 

It  is  at  least  partly  in  the  light  of  this  attitude  that  the 
political  opposition  must  be  interpreted.  "I  am  here  to  af- 
firm," said  M.  Sarrien,^^^  "that  no  government,  even  if  it 
were  formed  of  the  very  persons  who  now  beg  us  to  permit 
freedom  of  association  to  teachers,  to  postal  officials,  and  other 
civil  servants,  could  possibly  consent  without  committing  sui- 
cide, without  imperilling  the  very  existence  not  merely  of  the 
Repubfic,  but  any  regular  and  normal  political  regime."  M. 
Clemenceau  has  again  and  again  insisted  that  the  first  task  of 
a  minister  is  to  compel  the  civil  servant  to  accomplish  his  duty 
to  the  state.^^"  M.  Briand  has  affirmed  that  the  operation  of 
government  does  not  permit  the  constitution  of  a  privileged 
nation  within  the  ranks  of  the  nation  itself.^^^  Their  attitude 
was  the  more  interesting  since  both  they,  and  some  of  their 
colleagues  had,  before  taking  office,  urgently  upheld  the  right 
of  the  fonctionnaire  to  enjoy  the  benefit  of  the  law  of  1884. ^^^ 
But  it  is  to  be  assumed  that  the  experience  of  office  has  dissi- 
pated these  idle  dreams. 

The  real  difficulty  in  the  analysis  of  this  argument  is  to  know 
exactly  where  a  beginning  of  criticism  should  be  made.    It  im- 

^^^  Journal  Officiel,  Nov.  8,  1905. 
'8»/6id.,  March  14,  1906. 
"»  Ibid.,  July  12,  1906. 

'«2  Cf.  the  speech  of  M.  Willm,  in  Ibid.  May  11,  1909,  and  of  M.  Sembat, 
May  14,  1909. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        369 

plies  that  there  is  a  golden  rule  of  administration  which  succes- 
sive governments  have  laboured  earnestly  to  follow;  and  the 
cardinal  principle  in  that  rule  would  seem  to  be  the  refusal  of  any 
minister  to  permit  for  one  moment  the  organisation  of  the  civil 
service  within  his  department.  Yet,  in  fact,  no  such  policy  has 
ever  been  followed.  M,  Benoist  has  justifiably  complained  of 
the  alternation  of  strength  and  weakness  in  the  governmental 
attitude. ^^^  It  is  a  matter  of  common  notoriety  that  the  defiant 
challenge  to  administrative  syndicalism  undergoes  a  sensible 
diminution  at  election  time.  What  is  legitimate  in  the  Ministry 
of  Public  Works  is  fraught  with  grave  danger  in  the  Ministry  of 
Public  Instruction.^^^  The  ministers  dismiss  civil  servants  in 
order  to  emphasise  their  authority,  but,  sooner  or  later,  they 
always  take  the  vast  majority  back.  And  it  is  difficult  to  dis- 
cover whether  this  high  degree  of  control  is  necessary  to  main- 
tain the  service  as  it  now  is;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  whether  it  is 
the  basis  of  a  future  improvement.  If  the  first  hypothesis  be 
the  correct  one,  it  is  difficult  to  reconcile  with  expert  opinion 
that  the  condition  of  the  civil  service  is  simply  lamentable. ^^^ 
If  the  second  interpretation  be  correct,  it  is  still  more  difficult 
to  see  why  the  government  should  be  preparing  to  abandon 
that  control  in  order  to  institute  a  general  status  which  shall 
put  the  majority  of  these  problems  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
ministerial  whim;^^^  and  it  is  not  less  hard  to  know  why  the 
government  is  prepared  to  admit  the  jurisprudence  of  the  Coun- 
cil of  State  which  is  more  and  more  tending  to  give  the  civil  ser- 
vant and  his  associations  protection  against  arbitrary  treat- 
ment. ^^^ 

But  the  greatest  irony  remains.  Those  who  thus  profess 
themselves  so  anxious  for  the  quality  of  the  civil  service  are  the 
persons  most  responsible  for  its  corruption.  Even  if  it  be  true 
that  their  responsibility  is  mainly  weakness  in  the  face  of  parlia- 

»63  Ibid.,  March  26,  1909. 

"^Cf.  Paul-Boncour,  "Syndicats  de  Fonctionnaires,"  p.  20  f. 

«B  Cf.  Cahen,  "Les  Fonctionnaires,"  Ch.  IV. 

"*  The  government  has  several  times  introduced  proposals  towards  this 
end  and  the  whole  problem,  seemingly  with  ministerial  approval,  has  been 
discussed  often  in  the  Chamber. 

>6^  Cf.  Cahen,  p.  317  f. 


370        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

mentary  pressure,  the  fact  still  remains  that  it  was  in  their  power 
to  remedy  these  grievances  and  that  they  have  deliberately  ab- 
stained from  so  doing.  No  one  denies  that  the  business  of  gov- 
ment  must  be  carried  on ;  but  it  is  at  least  open  to  the  gravest 
doubt  whether  the  different  ministers  have  ever  tried  so  to 
organise  the  civil  service  as  to  assure  the  absence  of  the  griev- 
ances which  might,  above  all  things,  interrupt  it.  It  is  not  a 
solution  to  take  refuge  in  the  necessity  of  a  rigid  authoritarian- 
ism. The  position  of  the  civil  servant  in  the  modern  state  may 
be  a  specialised  one ;  but  he  does  not  surrender  his  human  impul- 
ses in  becoming  a  civil  servant.  That  the  grievances  of  which 
he  complained  were  real  the  government  tacitly  admitted  on  the 
different  occasions  when  it  embarked  upon  the  task  of  reform; 
but  even  when  the  difficulty  of  its  accomplishment  has  been 
admitted,  no  impartial  observer  can  doubt  that  there  has  never 
been  any  genuine  intention  to  give  effect  to  the  reforms  pro- 
posed. For  the  real- doubt  must  remain  whether,  in  the  present 
situation  of  French  parUamentarism,  the  reforms  so  postulated 
can  in  fact  be  achieved.  Any  system  in  which  the  executive  is 
at  the  mercy  of  the  legislature  is,  in  the  nature  of  things,  bound 
to  search  for  means  whereby  it  can  control  its  master.  That  is 
the  secret  of  the  corruption  of  English  poUtics  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  only  did  more  crudely  what  the 
average  French  minister  is  compelled  to  attempt  in  a  more  deli- 
cate fashion  if  hig  government  is  to  remain  in  office.  So  long  as 
no  single  party  dominates  the  chamber  it  is  necessary  to  buy  the 
support  of  groups  numerous  enough  to  constitute  a  majority; 
and  patronage  is  the  obvious  means  to  that  end.  So  that,  in 
practice,  the  real  implication  of  the  vast  authority  the  minister 
tends  to  demand  as  essential,  has,  as  its  object,  n6t  the  efficient 
operation  of  the  public  departments,  but  the  retention  of  a  con- 
venient means  to  power.  In  that  light,  the  anxiety  for  the  regu- 
lar conduct  of  public  business  appears  a  less  noble  aspiration. 
A  minister  naturally  dislikes  the  dislocation  that  follows  upon 
the  assertion  of  grievances  simply  because  its  consequences  in 
the  Chamber  are,  as  a  rule,  inconvenient.  He  can  be  certain  at 
least  of  an  interpellation;  and  of  a  French  interpellation  no  one 
dare  prophesy  the  outcome.  But  it  is  in  the  highest  degree 
difficult  to  see  that  an  analysis,  not  of  governmental  pretensions, 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        371 

but  of  the  steps  actually  taken  by  government  towards  the  ame- 
lioration of  the  actual  state  of  affairs,  could  lead  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  control  has  as  its  purpose  the  end  that  rhetoric  implies. 
Nor,  after  all,  is  it  possible  to  feel  that  the  ps3^chology  of  ad- 
ministrative control  is  so  simple  as  governmental  theory  would 
make  it.  It  is,  of  course,  undeniable  that  the  continuous  func- 
tioning of  the  civil  service  is  fundamental  to  the  modern  state. 
It  is  as  obvious  as  can  be  that  inefficiency  in  a  government  de- 
partment,  hardly  less  than  actual  dislocation  of  service  itself,  has 
evil  consequences  that  reverberate  throughout  the  body  politic. 
Yet  the  doubt  must  remain  whether  the  way  in  which  the  civil 
service  in  France  is  organised  can  secure  the  results  that  modern 
government  must  achieve.  No  one  who  reads  the  literature  of 
the  French  fonctionnaires  can  doubt  that  the  authority  of  the 
minister  is  too  overshadowing.  The  motives  it  leaves  to  the 
official  are  simply  not  adequate.  The  reports  that  either  no  one 
ever  sees,  or  that  lie  buried  amid  the  official  archives,  do  not 
call  forth  the  best  quahties  of  which  the  official  is  really  capable. 
He  does  not  come  into  contact  with  the  chamber,  or,  if  he  does, 
it  is  only  to  persuade  some  friendly  deputy  to  use  his  influence 
for  his  promotion.  The  whole  effort  is  towards  making  thought 
a  routine  instead  of  an  invention.  There  is  too  Uttle  certainty 
that  effort  will  obtain  its  reward.  There  is  too  little  opportunity 
for  the  exercise  of  those  creative  faculties  which  responsibility 
alone  will  call  into  play.  There  is  too  little  chance  that  the 
official  will  be  able,  if  not  to  decide,  at  any  rate  to  deUberate, 
those  great  pubhc  questions  which,  from  their  very  nature,  must 
serve  to  quicken  the  imagination.  Too  much  energy  is  occupied 
in  the  writing  of  minutes  upon  the  minutes  of  other  people,  and 
too  little  upon  the  defence,  in  the  verbal  interchange  of  thought, 
of  the  ideas  which  those  minutes  contain.  If  the  civil  servant 
knew  that  to  make  himself  an  authority  upon  some  public  ques- 
tion was  bound  to  result  in  bringing  him  into  direct  relationship 
with  those  who  frame  the  answer  to  it,  the  general  picture  of  the 
civil  service  would  not  be  that  which  the  curious  can  find  in  the 
novels  of  Balzac  and  de  Maupassant.  He  can  do  none  of  these 
things  simply  because  they  in  reality  make  him  essentially  an 
expert  who  must,  because  of  his  expertness,  be  given  the  right 
to  at  least  a  measure  of  independence.     That  independence, 


372        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

from  the  nature  of  his  position,  will  tend  to  grow  until  it  absorbs 
the  group  to  which  he  belongs.  But  where  that  is  once  achieved, 
not  only  is  the  main  demand  of  administrative  syndicaUsm  con- 
ceded, but  at  the  same  time,  the  future  of  parliamentary  govern- 
ment in  France  becomes  even  more  problematical  than  it  is  at 
the  present  time. 

And  this,  in  fact,  is  the  real  crux  of  the  governmental  attitude. 
Safety  and  permanence  are  not  the  distinguishing  features  of 
French  ministries;  but  at  any  rate  the  minister  knows  the  ech- 
nique  at  present  in  vogue.  To  change  it  is  virtually  to  set  him 
out  on  an  uncharted  sea.  He  will  have  to  discover  new  methods 
of  manipulation  in  the  Chamber.  His  relations  to  his  depart- 
ment will  undergo  a  total  reconstruction.  He  will  retain  the 
direction  of  its  activities.  He  will  still  be  able  to  say  what  he 
wants,  to  determine  the  large  outlines  of  policy.  But  he  will 
suggest  administration  rather  than  actually  operate  it.  It  is  a 
break  with  tradition  so  large  that  everyone  can  understand  why 
he  should  feel  suspicious  of  the  readjustment.  And  he  is  moved 
by  another  consideration.  At  present  he  is  responsible  for  his 
department.  For  whatever  the  humblest  of  his  officials  may  do, 
he,  and  he  only,  must  answer  to  the  chamber.  That,  in  his  view, 
is  not  the  least  reason  why  he  has  the  right  to  autocratic  control 
For  if  the  policy  of  the  department  may  result  in  his  downfall 
clearly  he  has  the  right  to  demand  that,  in,  principle  and  in 
detail,  it  shall  be  his  own  policy.  To  make  the  civil  service  inde- 
pendent of  him  is  to  make  him  suffer  for  faults  that  will  not  be, 
even  in  theory,  his  own. 

Certainly,  to  an  Englishman  who  has  been  brought  up  to  see 
the  ample  cloak  of  ministerial  charity  cast  around  the  erring 
official  on  every  occasion,  there  is  much  plausibility  in  such  an 
attitude.  But,  equally  certainly,  it  is  a  mcritricious  plausibility 
simply  because  it  ignores  the  essential  factors  involved.  There 
are  obviously  two  kinds  of  fault  of  which  the  civil  scrvan  may 
be  guilty.  His  fault  may  be  due  to  the  inherent  nature  of  the 
work  he  is  called  upon  to  execute;  or  it  may,  on  the  other  hand, 
be  due  simply  to  some  blunder  of  his  own.  In  the  first  case,  it  is 
clear  that  the  minister  is  responsible.  If  a  minister  should  order 
the  police  to  tear  down  a  Roman  Catholic  Church,  the  resultant 
noting  is  surely  to  be  ascribed  to  the  stupidity  of  the  minister. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE  MODERN   STATE        373 

But  it  is  not  less  clear  that  no  one  could  hold  the  minister  respon- 
sible for  a  personal  blunder  of  an  official.  If,  for  instance,  a 
teacher  in  a  school  should  dehberately  go  out  of  his  way  to  break 
the  regulations  which  deal  with  educational  neutrahty  upon 
religious  questions,  that  would  in  vo  way  affect  the  minister's 
position.  It  would,  perhaps,*^^  be  his  business  to  see  that  dis- 
cussion of  the  teacher's  act  was  made  by  the  proper  authorities 
concerned.  But  there  his  functions  would  end.  Personal  fault, 
that  is  to  say,  would  involve  on  the  part  of  a  minister  nothing 
more  than  the  duty  of  seeing  that  the  regular  disciplinary  proce- 
dure was  at  every  point  observed.  Faults  that  are  derived  di- 
rectly from  a  policy  which  the  minister  has  conceived  must  be 
laid  no  less  directly  at  his  door.  Now  it  is  true  that,  again  and 
again,  difficulties  will  arise  in  interpretation,  no  classification 
can  pretend  even  to  be  perfect.  But,  in  such  a  division  of  re- 
sponsibility as  this,  it  is  surely  evident  that  an  adequate  safe- 
guard exists  for  protecting  ministerial  interests.  It  is  not  diffi- 
cult to  imagine  that  the  average  statesman  would  even  feel 
relieved  if  he  did  not  bear  the  burden  of  every  departmental 
care.  Undeniably,  the  result  of  such  a  change  upon  parlia- 
mentary fife  would  be  far-reaching.  Not  less  clearly,  if  minis- 
terial responsibihty  is  divided,  means  must  be  created  for  the 
adequate  protection  of  the  public  against  the  faults  of  the 
official.    That,  however,  is  in  no  sense  an  impossible  task. 

In  such  an  interpretation  the  political  answer  to  administra- 
tive syndicalism  is  at  no  point  an  answer  at  all.  What,  un- 
doubtedly, it  has  effectively  done  is  to  show  the  determination 
with  which  the  upholders  of  the  present  system  will  maintain 
their  defences.  But  there  is  an  implication  in  the  argument  that 
is  put  forward  that  cannot  be  too  strongly  denied.  "  The  state," 
writes  M.  Fernand  Faure,^^^  "cannot,  ....  in  the  measure 
of  its  functions,  be  too  strong."  It  must  act,  that  is  to  say,  at 
every  instant  as  a  sovereign  authority  whose  demands  can  brook 
no  question.     "The  state  alone,"  says  M.  Larnaude^^"  "can  re- 

1G8  "Perhaps,"  because  it  is  possible  to  envisage  an  organisation  of  the 
civil  service  in  which  even  this  intervention  is  unnecessary. 

^^'  Cf.  his  long  attack  in  the  Revue  Politique  et  Parlemenlaire,  March, 
190G. 

"°  Revue  Penilentiare,  1906. 


374         AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE 

main  master  of  the  event,"  and  M.  Berthelemy  seems^^^  to 
regard  the  whole  movement  as  nothing  more  than  an  unworthy- 
effort,  clearly  deserving  only  of  suppression,  to  exploit  the  state 
for  private  purposes.  But,  surely,  in  criticism  such  as  this  it  is 
not  really  the  state  that  is  in  question.  What  the  civil  servant 
attacks  is  the  group  of  men  who,  at  the  moment,  possess  the 
fused  power  the  state  possesses.  It  is  a  revolt  against  govern- 
ment of  which  they  are  complaining.  The  transition  from  state 
to  government,  is,  of  course,  a  fatally  easy  one;  but  it  is  a  transi- 
tion of  which  each  step  demands  the  closest  investigation.  No 
one  would  object  to  a  strong  state  if  guarantees  could  be  had 
that  its  strength  would  be  used  for  the  fulfilment  of  its  theoretic 
purposes.  The  real  problem  involved  is  the  suspicion  of  those 
who  watch  the  actual  operation  of  its  instruments  that  they 
have  been,  in  fact,  diverted  from  the  ends  they  were  intended 
to  serve.  To  admit  the  sovereignty  of  the  state,  in  the  sense 
in  which  statesmen  understand  that  concept,  is  simply  to  give 
added  power  to  the  government.  It  is,  that  is  to  say,  to  mistake 
the  private  will  of  a  constantly  changing  group  whose  interests 
are  at  no  point  indentical  with  those  of  the  nation,  for  the  inter- 
ests of  the  state  as  a  whole.  A  strong  state  does  not  mean  a 
state  in  which  no  one  resists  the  declared  will  of  government; 
or,  if  it  does,  we  need  new  political  terms.  For,  in  that  event, 
change  wuuld  never  be  justified  except  insofar  as  it  met  with  the 
approval  of  those  who  held  the  reins  of  power;  and  it  is  his- 
torically obvious  that  any  general  acceptance  of  such  an  atti- 
tude is  entirely  subversive  of  progress. 

A  state,  after  all,  is  no  mysterious  entity.  It  is  only  a  terri- 
torial society  into  which,  from  a  variety  of  historical  causes, 
a  distinction  between  rulers  and  subjects  has  been  intro- 
duced.^" The  only  justification  for  a  claim  by  government 
of  its  obedience  is  the  clear  proof  that  it  satisfies  the  material 
and  moral  claims  of  those  over  whom  it  exercises  control.    We 

"1  Revue  de  Paris,  Feb.  15,  1906. 

'"I  owe  this  conception  to  M.  Duguit,  but  I  think  that  he  has  never 
emphasised  sufficiently  the  territorial  character  of  the  state  as  opposed  to 
other  societies.  I  have  tried  to  suggest  the  implications  of  this  distinction 
in  the  first  chapter  of  this  book.  It  is  impliedly  present  in  the  first  chapter 
of  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty." 


AUTHORITY   IN    THE   MODERN  STATE        375 

cannot  wander  on  blindly  with  self-shut  eyes,  merely  because 
order  is  convenient  and  rebellion  attended  by  the  gravest 
dangers.  The  whole  case  for  administrative  syndicalism  goes 
most  clearly  to  show  that  government  has  not  been  able  to  give 
proofs  of  that  satisfaction.  So  widespread  a  movement  must 
have  had  causes  more  profound  than  the  antagonism  of  its 
opponents  would  suggest.  It  is,  above  all,  a  problem  in  organisa- 
tion. What  it  suggests  is  inherent  error  in  the  mechanism  of 
the  modern  state.  It  suggests  a  redistribution  of  power.  It 
indicates  a  conviction  that  certain  of  the  demands  now  made 
by  government  are  in  fact  unnecessary  to  the  fulfilment  of  its 
purposes,  cannot,  further,  be  made  if  the  purposes  of  govern- 
ment are  to  be  fulfilled.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  difficult  to 
understand  what  exactly  is  gained  by  the  empty  insistence  that 
the  state  must  be  strong  without  giving  the  valid  demonstra- 
tion of  the  purpose  for  which  that  strength  is  to  be  used.  Gov- 
ernment is  only  a  convention  which  men,  on  the  whole,  accept 
because  of  a  general  conviction  that  its  effort  is  for  good.  Where 
the  machine  breaks  down,  where  the  purpose  of  those  who  drive 
it  becomes  to  an  important  class  sinister,  it  is  humanly  inevitable 
that  an  effort  towards  change  should  be  made. 

To  those  who  hold  the  reins  of  power  it  was  perhaps  inevita- 
ble that  such  an  effort  should  be  regarded  as  the  coronation  of 
anarchy.  To  oppose  the  government  is,  for  them,  to  destroy 
the  state.  But  it  is,  in  fact,  anarchy  only  in  the  sense  in  which 
the  replacement  of  the  nobility  as  the  governing  power  at  the 
Revolution  was  anarchy.  The  seat  of  authority  therein  passed 
to  the  middle  classes.  But  government  remained  at  once  a 
narrow  and  irresponsible  power.  It  has  been  attacked  at  two 
points  since  that  time.  Economically,  the  workers  show  in- 
creasing sign  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  fulfilment  of  its  pur- 
poses; administratively,  the  civil  service  rejects  the  notion  of 
its  authority.  The  change  that  is  implied  in  this  impatience 
is  not  less  profound  than  that  of  a  century  and  a  half  ago. 
Whether  the  change  that  accompanies  every  great  transforma- 
tion in  the  seat  of  authority  can  be  accomphshed  without  vio- 
lence is  a  problem  to  which  the  answer  has  still  to  be  discov- 
ered. Certainly  there  is  no  need  to  becloud  the  question  by 
representing  revolution  as  a  rare  exception  in  historical  pro- 


376        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

cedure.  Aristotle  realised  that  well  enough  when  he  devoted 
a  book  of  the  "Politics"  to  its  discussion.  If  we  endeavour  to 
stand  outside  the  historic  process  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  that 
this,  hke  so  many  of  his  general  maxims,  remains  not  the  less 
true  two  thousand  three  hundred  years  after  his  time.^^^ 

VII.  THE  MOVEMENT  TOWARDS  REFORM 

Obviously  enough,  a  movement  so  widespread  as  this  must 
have  swept  some  effort  at  reform  into  the  eddies  of  its  current, 
and  both  in  politics  and  in  jurisprudence  it  is  possible  to  find 
signs  of  a  changing  temper  towards  the  civil  service.  A  serious 
attempt  was  in  process,  at  least  before  the  outbreak  of  war,  of 
which  the  general  purport  was  to  limit  the  arbitrary  character 
of  ministerial  discretion.  That,  after  all,  is  the  fundamental 
point;  for  ministerial  discretion  was  essentially  an  inheritance 
of  the  ancien  regime  which  stamped  the  whole  system  with  its 
peculiar  and  vicious  character.  It  was  an  assertion  that  the 
minister,  as  an  agent  of  the  state,  partook  of  its  sovereign 
nature;  assault  upon  his  powers  was  therefore  a  priori  fruitless. 
That  attitude  is  already  dying.  The  courts  have  shown 
signs  of  an  important  eagerness  to  insist  on  regarding  as  ultra 
vires  any  infraction  of  the  departmental  regulations.  The 
minister  might  make  his  own  rules,  but,  until  he  changed  them 
he  was  at  every  point  bound  by  the  clear  purpose  they  had  in 
view.  The  government  itself  was  proposing  perhaps,  indeed, 
with  a  heart  less  determined  than  the  situation  made  desirable, 
to  bring  the  position  of  the  civil  servant  within  the  scope  of 
statute  within  the  civil  service  itself.  The  faint  and  fitful  de- 
velopment of  a  new  autonomy  has  not  as  yet  been  sufficiently 
clear  to  be  suggestive.  It  was,  it  is  true,  an  auto-limitation. 
It  did  not  involve  derogation  from  the  sovereign  power  of  the 
state.     No  one  was  bound  by  the  action  that  has  been  taken. 

1"  "Politics,"  Bk.  V.  1301  a.  "All  these  formsof  government  have  a  kind 
of  justice,  but  tried  by  an  absolute  standard,  they  are  faulty  and  therefore 
both  parties,  whenever  their  share  in  the  government,  does  not  accord  with 
their  preconceived  ideas,  stir  up  revolution."  The  plea  of  administrative 
syndicalism  would  seem  to  be  that  the  absolute  standard  of  justice  cannot 
even  be  approached  without  a  radical  change  in  the  distribution  of  the 
share  in  government. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        377 

The  effort  that  has  been  made  is  in  every  event  indicative  of 
the  advent  of  a  new  epoch  rather  than  the  actual  inauguration 
of  it.  But  auto-Hmitation  has  an  historical  habit  of  giving  way 
to  an  objective  law.  Administrative  admission  becomes  admin- 
istrative practice;  sooner  or  later  the  convention  becomes  strong 
enough  to  resist  the  force  of  pressure.  Those  who  have  wit- 
nessed the  substitution  of  rule  for  discretion  will  not  easily  go 
back  to  the  chaos  of  an  earlier  time. 

Parliament  has  discussed  proposals  which  have  endeavoured 
to  give  a  definite  status  to  the  fonctionnaire.  None,  as  yet, 
has  reached  the  statute-book;  but  the  mere  fact  of  their  pro- 
posal, and  the  wealth  of  superlative  discussion  they  have 
evoked,  are  in  themselves  indicative  of  much.  The  two  projects 
derived  from  government  sources  had  not,  indeed,  high  value. 
They  were  not  based  on  adequate  consultation  with  the  fonc- 
tionnaires  themselves;  and  the  attempt  to  make  the  Council 
of  State  an  advisory,  but  not  a  compulsive  body,  was  a  clearly 
hopeless  one.^^*  The  denial  of  the  right  of  federation  meant 
the  retention  of  the  hierarchical  system  and  of  departmental 
separatism.  1^^  Defects  like  these  struck  at  the  root  of  any 
possible  concord;  and,  in  fact,  they  only  produced  the  famous 
Open  Letter  to  M.  Clemenceau  which  brought  clearly  into  the 
light  the  inability  of  his  ministry  to  appreciate  the  real  facts 
at  issue.  The  government  proposals  aggravated  a  schism  rather 
than  healed  it.  They  made  clear  the  certainty  that  sooner  or 
later  the  movement  must  be  dealt  with;  but  they  made  it  also 
not  less  evident  that  it  was  already  too  strong  to  be  deceived. 

Far  more  serious  in  character,  because  far  more  comprehen- 
sive, have  been  the  efforts  of  the  chamber  itself.  The  commis- 
sion of  which  M.  Jeanneney  was  the  reporter  has,  at  any  rate, 
understood  the  significance  of  the  movement.  If  its  report 
was,  on  the  whole,  a  somewhat  unsatisfactory  compromise, ^^^ 
that  was  less  from  the  spirit  it  displayed  than  from  the  fact 
that  between  the  aim  of  the  government  and  the  ideal  of  the 
fonctionnaire  there  is  no  possible  compromise.  No  solution 
can  be  satisfactory  which  does  not  take  account  of  the  unity 

'"Cf.  Leroy,  "Syndicats  et  Services  Publics,"  p.  267. 
>"Cf.  M.  Leroy's  acute  comment,  Ibid,  p.  269. 
"^  It  has  been  published  separately  by  Hachette. 


378        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

of  the  civil  service;  and  from  the  fact  of  that  unity  alone,  any 
attempt  to  insist  on  departmental  separatism  is  doomed  to 
failure.^"  No  prohibition  of  the  strike  can  be  effective  which 
does  not  envisage  the  cause  of  recourse  to  such  a  weapon.  It 
is  true  enough,  as  M.  Jeanneney  reminds  us,^^^  that  the  object 
of  the  civil  servant  is  to  ensure  the  operation  of  the  service 
with  which  he  is  charged;  but  equally  fundamental  is  the  con- 
dition under  which  he  is  to  perform  his  duty.  The  Commission 
seems  to  have  grasped  this  fact;  and  it  was  yet  prevented  from 
dealing  firmly  with  the  obvious  implications  of  its  admission 
by  the  fear  of  government  opposition.  The  chamber,  in  any 
case,  has  not  been  able  to  take  up  the  project,  and  later  dis- 
cussion, while  it  has  clarified  the  problem,  has  not  advanced 
the  answer  to  it. 

But  it  has  served  to  make  two  things  clear.  It  is  obvious, 
in  the  first  place,  that  the  problem  of  the  civil  service  is  only 
part  of  the  far  wider  problem  of  governmental  reform.  In 
every  aspect,  the  instruments  of  the  state  are  in  need  of  re- 
construction. Some  of  its  mechanisms  are  expensive  and  out- 
worn. Others  demand  autonomy  or  decentralisation  for  their 
adequate  operation.  The  sovereign  state,  as  M.  Duguit  has 
repeatedly  emphasised,  is  becoming  a  great  public  service  cor- 
poration; and  its  organs  demand  readjustment  to  the  new 
purposes  it  is  to  serve.  It  is,  moreover,  clear,  that,  in  such  a 
perspective,  the  first  demand  to  be  made  of  government  by  its 
subjects  will  be  the  continuous  and  undisturbed  performance 
of  its  functions.  That,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted,  involves 
something  in  the  nature  of  a  status  for  those  who  are  employed 
by  government.  They  may  see  the  element  of  contract  in  their 
situation;  but  the  element  of  duty  will  be  not  less  sharply 
defined.!" 

The  problem,  in  such  an  aspect,  becomes  very  largely  a 
psychological  one.  It  is  the  problem  of  translating  a  psy- 
chological satisfaction  into  definite  legal  terms.  It  will  be 
useless  to  prohibit  strikes  by  statute^^"  so  long  as  the  mass  of 

'"  Rapport,  p.  98. 

"»Ibid,  p.  109. 

"9  Cf.  Duguit,  "Transf.  du  Droit  Public,"  p.  156  f. 

180  Q J.  i^y  injunction  as,  impliedly,  in  the  Adanison  decision. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        379 

the  civil  service  feels  itself  sufficiently  oppressed  by  its  griev- 
ances to  refuse  obedience  to  the  law.  The  history  of  the  last 
few  years  has  notably  demonstrated  the  powerlessness  of 
statute  in  the  face  of  great  popular  movements.^^^  That  is 
not  because  of  any  inherent  or  growing  disrespect  for  law.^^^ 
It  is  simply  that  we  are  living  in  an  age  of  change  so  vast  that 
administration  can  not  keep  pace  with  its  demands.  Law  fol- 
lows popular  sentiment  rather  than  creates  it;  and  the  modern 
disparity  has  been  notably  widened  simply  because  our  jurists 
have  been  working  with  the  instruments  of  an  earlier  time. 
A  theory  of  law  which  endeavours,  in  such  a  synthesis  as  this, 
to  frame  its  solution  in  the  pragmatic  terms  of  the  conflicting 
interests  involved  has  alone  the  opportunity  to  make  a  con- 
venient unity  out  of  this  multiplicity  of  principles. ^^'  It  will 
start  from  the  acceptance  of  what  is,  in  theory  at  least,  per- 
haps a  fundamental  novelty — the  notion  that  the  interests  of 
government  are  in  no  instance  paramount.  It  will  not  deceive 
itself  by  the  too-facile  belief  that  the  primary  interest  of  law 
is  in  the  preservation  of  order.  There  are  times  when  the 
business  of  law  is  not  the  maintenance  of  an  old  equilibrium 
but  the  creation  of  a  new  one.  It  is  to  that  task  that  our 
efforts  must  today  be  directed. 

And  what  is  here  significant  is  the  perception  by  the  supreme 
administrative  tribunal  of  France  of  the  implications  of  this 
new  orientation.  The  time  has  already  passed  when  adminis- 
trative jurisdiction  could  be  regarded  as  distinct  from  the  or- 
dinary judicial  power,  when  it  could  be  regarded  as  simply 
executive  justice  by  act  of  grace.  It  is  coming  to  be  nothing 
so  much  as  an  organ  of  protection  for  such  non-governmental 
interests  as  are  affected  by  ultra  vires  acts.  It  is  coming  to 
insist  on  the  responsibility  of  the  state  for  its  acts  as  a  dogma 
not  less  necessary  to  our  own  time  than  state-irresponsibility 
could  be  regarded  as  essential  by  the  nineteenth  century.  It 
is  modifying,  gradually,  it  is  true,  but  also  with  a  steady  and 

1"  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  27. 

1*2  As  Professor  Dicey  seems  to  think,  "Law  of  the  Constitution"  (8th 
ed.),  P-  xxxvii. 

i8>  Cf .  Pound,  Address  to  the  New  Hampshire  Bar  Association,  June  30, 
1917,  p.  14  f. 


380        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN  STATE 

almost  marvellous  persistency,  the  relations  of  the  state  with 
its  officials  on  the  one  hand  and  private  citizens  on  the  other. 
It  is  no  longer  possible  for  the  state  to  defend  its  acts  on  the 
ground  that  they  are  clothed  with  the  mystic  power  of  sover- 
eignty. Not  only  the  form,  but  the  contents  also,  of  an  act 
may  be  impugned.  The  state,  in  short,  has  become  a  private 
corporation  which  must  act  in  accordance  with  its  fundamental 
and  general  purpose  on  the  one  hand,  and  its  special  instruc- 
tions for  each  immediate  situation  on  the  other.  Its  law,  that 
is  to  say,  is  no  longer  the  subjective  command  that  issues  from 
its  sovereign  will;  it  is  an  objective  interpretation  of  necessity 
drawn  from  the  study  of  the  facts  of  each  issue  that  may 
arise.  ^^* 

This  evolution  is  hkely,  within  certain  well-defined  limits, 
completely  to  revise  the  time-honoured  relation  between  the 
state  and  the  fonctionnaire.  It  is  not  in  any  sense  a  final 
revision.  So  long  as  the  power  of  regulating  civil  service  con- 
ditions belongs  to  the  minister  as  the  head  of  his  department 
it  is  a  revision  at  each  stage  Uable  to  reversal.  The  time,  of 
course,  will  come  when  this  auto-Hmitation  will  no  longer  be 
deemed  adequate,  and  the  minister  will  then,  no  less  than  his 
humblest  official  be  subject  to  the  rule  of  law.  But,  for  tem- 
porary purposes,  it  is  an  advance;  and  it  points  the  way  to 
a  time  when  the  scope  of  sovereignty  will  be  hmited  by  a 
system  less  liable  to  interruption  than  the  regime  of  whim  and 
caprice.  Since  1903,  at  any  rate,  it  has  been  impossible  to 
uphold  an  irregular  nomination.  So  long  as  there  are  rules  the 
Council  of  State  will  enforce  them.  It  has  been  admitted  that 
those  who  are  technically  qualified  to  fulfill  certain  functions 
have  sufficient  interest  in  appointment  to  them  as  to  prevent 
men  who  are  not  qualified  from  nomination. ^^"^  It  was  no 
more  than  a  natural  deduction  from  that  advance  to  prevent 

1"  On  this  general  evolution  cf.  Duguit  "Les  Transformations  du  Droit 
Public,"  Chaps.  V  and  VII,  and  for  details,  G.  Teisscr  "La  Responsabilit6  de 
la  Puissance  Publique."  I  have  dealt  with  its  implications  in  the  first 
chapter  of  this  book. 

>»5  Arret  Lotet  Molinier,  II,  Dec,  1903,  cf.  Duguit,  "Trait6  de  Droit 
Constitutionnel,"  I,  474. 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        381 

irregular  promotion  and  dismissal. ^^^  It  was  clearly  wise  to 
insist  upon  the  observance  of  the  rule  that  a  civil  servant  must 
be  informed  of  the  grounds  upon  which  any  disciplinary  meas- 
ure is  taken  against  him.^^^  Before  1907,  it  was  by  individual 
action  that  these  rights  were  guaranteed.  Since  that  time  a 
great  step  forward  has  been  taken  by  the  permission  given  to 
civil  service  associations  to  appear  as  parties  in  actions  where 
they  can  prove  that  they  are  directly  interested. ^^*  Nor  is  it 
without  significance  that  one  court  at  least  should  have  been 
willing  to  receive  the  plea  of  a  federation  of  teachers  against 
an  alleged  libel  of  the  Archbishop  of  Rheims;*^^  and  even 
where  other  courts  have  hesitated  to  admit  such  a  plea  the 
existence  of  corporate  prejudice  has  been  recognised.^'"  Eng- 
lish experience  suggests  that  the  further  step  is  inevitable  ;*^i 
and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  these  decisions  mark 
an  epoch  in  the  history  of  administrative  law. 

Nor  is  the  organisation  of  private  citizens  less  important  in 
its  ultimate  consequences.  Alongside  the  growth  of  these  pro- 
ducers' organisations  we  have  an  evolution  of  consumers'  con- 
trol. Its  effort  is  directed  towards  almost  every  conceivable 
object  of  governmental  activity.  The  subscribers  to  the  na- 
tional telephone  system  have  organised  a  society  which  not 
only  protects  its  members  in  their  complaints  against  inade- 
quate operation,  but  also  insists  that  the  government  pay 
regard  to  the  most  modern  scientific  improvements.  The 
Catholic  church  has  welded  into  a  formidable  organisation  the 
fathers  of  families  who  belong  to  that  religion  to  insist  upon 
the  due  observance  of  scholastic  neutrality.  The  taxpayers 
have  grouped  themselves  together  with   the   object,   among 

"» Arret  Wamier,  July  7, 1905,  (promotion);  Arr6t  Fortin  (Aug.  6,  1908) 
dismissal. 

1"  Arret  Vilar,  Aug.  6,  1909. 

1**  Arret  of  Dec.  11,  1908.  "Association  Professionnelle  des  Employes 
Civiles  du  ministere  des  colonies,"  »Sircr/,  1909,  III,  17,  with  note  of  M. 
Haurion. 

189  Cf .  Cahen,  op.  cit.,  p.  325. 

19"  Ibid.,  p.  326. 

"1  Brown  v.  Thomson  &  Co.  (1912)  S.  C.  359.  Cf.  my  article  in  Harvard 
Law  Review     Vol.  xxix  p.  242f. 


382        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

others,  of  insisting  upon  due  economy  in  the  performance  of 
goverrmiental  functions.  The  League  of  the  Rights  of  Man 
undertakes  the  most  laborious  inquiries  into  alleged  miscar- 
riages of  justice.  Nor  is  this  all.  On  every  hand  the  govern- 
ment is  beginning,  tentatively,  indeed,  and  without  evident 
understanding  of  its  ultimate  significance,  to  associate  the  pri- 
vate citizen  with  the  business  of  administration. ^^^  The  Supe- 
rior Council  of  Agriculture  is  a  board  of  expert  council.  The 
Consultative  Committee  on  Railways,  instituted  by  the  min- 
ister of  public  works,  comprises  within  its  membership  repre- 
sentatives of  most  of  the  great  industries  by  which  the  railways 
profit.  It  is  a  committee  ^vith  genuine  functions  and  a  growing 
power.  It.  speaks  with  a  representative  suggestiveness  that  is 
far  too  powerful  to  be  ignored.  Nor  is  this  less  true  of  com- 
merce or  of  charity.  On  all  hands  there  are  growing  up  asso- 
ciations of  every  kind  which  aim  directly  at  supplementing  the 
work  of  parties  on  the  one  hand,  and  directly  controlling  the 
business  of  administration  on  the  other. ^^^  They  in  nowise 
supplant  the  ordinary  mechanisms  of  party;  but  they  are  often 
enough  important  in  the  direction  they  can  give  to  the  forces 
of  public  opinion.  They  are  the  beginning  of  what  will  event- 
ually be  the  definite  organisation  of  every  interest  that  is  af- 
fected by  the  action  of  the  state.  They  arc  the  admission  of 
elements  within  the  national  hfc  that  refuse  to  find  their  ordi- 
nary satisfaction  in  the  accepted  methods  of  politics.  They 
represent  the  growing  emphasis  upon  the  diverse  elements  that 
go  to  make  up  citizenship,  and,  in  particular,  the  insistence 
upon  the  importance  of  function.  They  are  at  the  beginning 
of  their  evolution  and  not  at  the  end  of  it;  for  the  definite 
organisation -of  the  consumer's  interest  in  the  state  has  a  sig- 
nificance scarcely  capable  of  exaggeration.^^* 

Ultimately,  indeed,  what  such  a  movement  implies  is  the 

^'^  It  is,  of  course,  profoundly  suggestive  to  compare  this  tendency  with 
the  organisation  of  the  Council  of  National  Defence  instituted  by  Congress 
after  the  outbreak  of  war. 

"3  On  all  this  cf.  Cahen,  op.  cit.,  pp.  266-95. 

'*•  Its  beginnings  in  England  and  the  United  States  in  such  organisa- 
tions as  the  Navy  League,  the  Housewives'  League,  etc.,  are  of  course, 
well-known. 


AUTHORITY  IN  THE  MODERN  STATE        383 

advent  of  a  consumers'  syndicalism — -the  organisation  of  the 
consumer's  interest  in  the  product  of  an  industry  exactly  as 
there  is  today  the  organisation  of  the  producers'  interest.  It 
is  unquestionable  that  a  public  opinion  so  created  would  tend 
to  assist  the  claims  of  the  civil  service.  It  would,  in  the  first 
place,  be  obvious  that  the  abuses  of  which  the  fonctionnaire 
complains  are  productive  of  waste  and  inefficiency.  It  is 
hardly  less  clear  that  the  whole  basis  of  good  administration 
is  the  possession  of  a  contented  civil  service.  It  is  difficult  to 
say  whether  a  public  opinion  would  today  admit  fonctionnariste 
autonomy;  the  probability  is  that  a  long  process  of  education 
would  be  needed  before  that  end  could  be  achieved.  But  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  doubt  that  the  organisation  of  opinion  upon 
the  problems  of  the  civil  service  would  lead  to  striking  reform. 
Certainly  this  has  been  the  lesson  of  English  experience  in  this 
regard. ^^^  No  large  step  could  be  taken  which  would  not  in- 
volve its  freedom  from  the  control  of  political  interests;  and 
that  is  likely  to  prove  a  first  step  on  the  road  to  the  autonomous 
decentralisation  that  is  claimed. 

It  is  impossible  to  prophesy  in  the  face  of  a  cataclysm. 
What  alone  emerges  as  immediately  certain  is  the  growing  im- 
portance of  the  administrative  function.  It  is  certain  that  for 
long  to  come  the  state  must  burden  itself  with  a  far  fuller  con- 
trol of  the  social  life  than  it  has  ever  before  assumed.  Obvi- 
ously enough,  in  such  an  analysis,  the  position  of  the  civil 
service  becomes  one  of  the  greatest  significance.  It  will  be 
fundamentally  impossible  to  go  back  to  the  epoch  before  the 
outbreak  of  war ;  the  only  question  will  rather  be  what  measure 
of  satisfaction  the  fonctionnaire  will  obtain.  Never  before  will 
the  need  of  efficient  administration  have  been  so  great;  never 
before  will  the  penalty  of  discontent  have  been  so  heavy.  The 
evolution  of  administrative  syndicalism  in  modern  France 
connects  itself  logically  with  this  outlook.  For  the  task  of 
government  is  likely  to  prove  far  too  vast  to  make  possible  an 
efficient  and  centralised  control.  In  administration,  not  less 
than  in  economics,  a  law  of  diminishing  returns  is  applicable. 
There  comes  a  point  in  the  business  of  government  when  the 

"^  Cf .  the  report  of  the  Royal  Commission  on  the  Civil  Service  (191.'5), 
especially  the  separate  memoranda  signed  by  Mr.  Graham  Wallas. 


384        AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

further  burdening  of  the  central  authority  does  not  produce  an 
adequate  return  for  the  outlay  it  involves.  Decentralisation 
becomes  at  that  point  essential.  It  is  the  only  way  in  which 
the  congestion  by  which  all  unitary  governments  are  oppressed 
can  be  relieved.  It  provides  the  only  method  by  which  the 
necessary  attention  can  be  given  to  special  and  local  needs. ^^^ 
That  is  true  not  less  of  special  occupations  than  of  special 
areas.  No  one,  for  instance,  can  study  the  problem  involved 
in  the  fixation  of  railroad  rates  without  feeling  at  once  the 
immense  difficulties  that  are  involved  in  the  assumption  of 
any  necessary  desirability  in  a  uniform  system. ^^'  We  are  on 
all  hands  faced  by  the  questions  of  diversity  and  delimitation. 
The  erection  of  distinct  and  autonomous  authorities  is  the 
logical  outcome  of  that  recognition. 

The  mistake  we  have  made  in  the  past  is  to  think  of  federal 
government  in  terms  simply  of  area  and  of  distance.  Federa- 
tions in  the  past  have  been  so  naturally  the  outcome  either  of 
vast  size  on  the  one  hand  or  of  the  coalescence  of  historically 
separate  communities  on  the  other,  that  it  has  been  difficult 
not  to  translate  our  federal  thought  immediately  into  spatial 
terms.  We  must  learn  to  think  differently.  Even  in  America, 
the  classic  ground  of  federal  experiment,  it  is  a  new  federalism 
that  is  everywhere  developing.^^^  If,  as  with  the  districts  of 
the  Federal  Reserve  System,  and  of  the  Rural  Credits  Board, 
it  is  at  least  partly  a  matter  of  area,  it  is  not  less  obvious  that 
a  federalism  of  functions  is  at  hand — that  is  to  say  that  exactly 
as  in  the  past  we  attempted  delimitation  by  area,  so,  today, 
we  are  attempting  the  delimitation  of  purposes.  There  is  a 
clear  tendency  upon  the  part  of  industrial  and  professional 
groups  to  become  self-governing.  Legislation  consecrates  the 
solutions  they  evolve.  They  become  sovereign  in  the  sense — 
which,  after  all,  is  the  only  sense  that  matters — that  the  rules 
they  draw  up  are  recognized  as  the  answer  to  the  problems 
they  have  to  meet.     They  are  obtaining  compulsory  power 

"*  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  Appendix  B. 

^^'  Cf.  the  remarkable  evidence  of  Mr.  Justice  Brandeis  before  the  inter- 
state Commerce  Commission  of  the  U.  S.  Senate,  Sixty-Second  Congress, 
1911-12,  pp.  1267-72. 

»»»  Cf.  Mr.  Croly's  article  in  the  ''The  New  Republic,"  Vol.  IX,  p.  170. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        385 

over  their  members;  they  demand  their  taxes;  they  exercise 
their  discipHne;  they  enforce  their  penal  sanctions.  They  raise 
every  question  that  the  modern  federal  state  has  to  meet  and 
their  experience  is,  governmentally,  a  valuable  basis  for  national 
enterprise.^^^ 

But  their  assumption  of  sovereign  powers  is  important  in 
another  aspect.  To  make  the  state  omnicompetent  is  to  leave 
it  at  the  mercy  of  any  group  that  is  powerful  enough  to  exploit 
it.  That  has  been,  indeed,  one  of  the  main  historical  causes 
of  social  unrest.  It  transforms  every  political  struggle  into  an 
economic  conflict.  It  inevitably  introduces  the  bitterness  of 
a  fight  between  interests  which,  in  such  an  aspect,  dare  not 
offer  compromise  with  their  antagonists.  The  only  way  out  of 
such  an  impasse  is  the  neutralisation  of  the  state;  and  it  cannot 
be  neutralised  saved  by  the  division  of  the  power  that  is  today 
concentrated  in  its  hands.  For  to  proclaim,  to  take  a  single 
example,  the  supreme  interest  of  the  state  in  preserving  order 
in  times  of  strikes,  is  already  to  make  it  take  sides.  The  su- 
preme interest  of  the  state  is  in  justice,  and  it  does  not  neces- 
sarily follow  that  justice  and  order  are  in  perfect  correlation. 
No  one  who  has  studied  the  relation  between  the  state's  interest 
in  the  preservation  of  order  and  the  exploitation  of  that  interest 
in  Colorado  will  find  room  for  serious  doubt  in  this  regard.  To 
make  the  state  universal  and  paramount  is  to  make  it  the 
creature  of  those  who  can  possess  themselves  of  its  instruments. 
What  obviously  must  be  done  is  to  secure  the  limitation  of  its 
activities,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  independence  of  its  instru- 
ments on  the  other.  But  the  functions  so  delimited  demand, 
in  their  turn,  their  organisation  and  we  are  thus  driven  back  to 
federal  government.^"" 

It  is  in  such  an  aspect  as  this  that  the  movement  towards 
administrative  syndicalism  must  be  interpreted.  It  is  not  a 
revolt  against  society  but  against  the  state.  It  is  not  a 
revolt    against   authority   but   against  a  theory  of  it  which 

1"  Not  the  least  powerful  argument  against  direct  government,  for 
example,  is  the  experience  from  early  trade-union  history,  cf.  Webb,  "In- 
dustrial Democracy,"  pp.  1-71. 

^o"  On  all  this  M.  Paul-Boncour's  "Fedcralisme  Economique"  is  an  ad- 
mirable mine  of  information. 


386         AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE 

is,  in  fact,  equivalent  to  servitude.  For  the  obvious  fact  is 
that  men  will  not  peacefully  endure  a  situation  they  deem  in- 
tolerable; and  any  theory  of  politics  which  denounces  their 
action  out  of  hand  at  once  stamps  itself  as  inadequate.  The 
truth  obviously  is  that  the  state  must  organize  itself  on  lines 
which  admit  to  the  full  the  opportunity  for  the  realisation  of 
personal  and  corporate  initiative;  and  it  is  simply  an  induction 
from  the  experience  of  the  last  century  that  a  sovereign  state 
can  be  driven  so  to  organize  itself  only  by  compulsion.  That 
is  the  real  importance  of  the  theory  of  this  movement.  The 
federalism  and  the  decentralisation  it  implies^''^  are,  in  fact,  the 
basis  upon  which  the  state  of  the  future  can  be  erected.  They 
are  the  sign-posts  of  its.  new  orientation.  They  take  account 
of  the  obvious  fact  that  the  sovereignty  of  the  state  is  a  power 
to  will;  but  they  insist  upon  the  limitations  of  that  power. 
For  a  study  of  the  processes  of  the  state  convincingly  demon- 
strates that  without  such  limitation  there  is  no  real  security 
for  liberty.  The  purpose  of  the  state  may  be  good;  but  more 
important  than  the  doctrine  that  it  inculcates  is  the  actual  life 
that  it  leads.  It  is  the  experience  of  its  life,  the  contact  with 
its  personaUty,  that  has  made  the  fonctionnaire  refuse  absorp- 
tion by  it.  He  is  unwilling,  even  in  theory,  to  leave  it  as  Levia- 
than, For  sovereignty,  it  cannot  too  often  be  emphasised, 
implies  the  possession  of  legal  rights;  and  by  its  legal  rights — 
in  theory  limitless — the  state  will  define  its  moral  powers.^''^ 
The  individual  gets  caught  in  a  complex  web  of  rights  and 
duties  where  morality  is  confounded  by  the  ambiguity  of  terms. 
To  limit  state-power  is  to  suggest  at  once  that  its  action  is 
capable  of  judgment.  It  is  to  exalt  the  importance  of  indi- 
vidual personality  and  thus  to  give  to  citizenship  a  profounder 
value.  It  is  to  make  the  use  of  power  at  every  moment  a 
moral  question  by  demanding  enquiry  into  the  end  it  is  to 
serve.  It  is,  in  Mr.  Figgis'  phrase,  to  replace  the  study  of 
rights  by  the  study  of  right;  and  if  that  attitude  is  frankly 
medieval,  it  is  none  the  worse  for  that.^"^ 

2"'  Though  related  they  are  different  things,  cf .  Duguit,  "Manuel  de  Droit 
Constitutionncl,"  p.  77  ff. 

^"2  Cf.  my  "Problem  of  Sovereignty,"  p.  20. 
203  Figgis,  "From  Gerson  to  Grotius,"  p.  153. 


AUTHORITY    IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        387 


For  authority,  after  all,  must  depend  upon  internal  roots  if 
it  is  to  be  of  any  avail.  We  too  rarely  consider  how  difficult  is 
the  decision  to  combat  the  state.  The  presumption  in  general 
opinion  is,  for  the  most  part,  on  its  side.  Order  is  the  accus- 
tomed mode  of  life,  and  to  betray  it  seems  like  enough  to  social 
treason.  There  is  probably  no  epoch  in  social  history  where 
organised  resistance  to  state-decision  has  not  its  root  in  some 
deep  grievance  honestly  conceived.  It  was  so  in  1381;  it  was 
so  in  1642;  in  1688  and  in  1789.  "Reform  that  you  may  pre- 
serve" is,  as  Macaulay  saidj^"^  "the  voice  of  great  events." 
The  state  has  barely  heeded  that  constant -warning;  and  the 
beatification  of  the  status  quo  is  ever  its  main  source  of  danger. 
Administrative  syndicalism  is  simply  a  step  towards  translating 
into  effective  terms  the  programme  of  democratic  government. 
It  is  its  statement  as  a  process  instead  of  as  a  claim.  Above 
all,  it  has  realised  that  to  preserve  the  play  of  mind,  whether 
in  the  government  of  the  state  or  of  more  private  enterprise, 
its  active  exercise  is  the  one  sure  path  of  safety.  The  real 
danger  in  any  society  is  lest  decision  on  great  events  secure 
only  the  passive  concurrence  of  the  mass  of  men.  It  is  only 
by  intensifying  the  active  participation  of  men  in  the  business 
of  government  that  liberty  can  be  made  secure.  For  there  is 
a  poison  in  power  against  which  even  the  greatest  of  nations 
must  be  upon  its  guard.  The  temptation  demands  resistances; 
and  the  solution  is  to  deprive  the  state  of  any  priority  not  fully 
won  by  performance.  That  is  what  is  implied  in  the  fonction- 
naire's  demand.  He  can,  as  he  thinks,  make  the  state  a  fuller 
and  richer  thing  by  the  dispersion  of  its  sovereignty.  He  can 
preserve  his  own  respect  by  securing  an  effective  voice  in  the 
determination  of  events.  He  can  prevent  the  exploitation  of 
the  administrative  services  by  making  their  processes  objective 
in  character.  It  is  a  movement  that  is  as  yet  but  at  its  begin- 
ning; and  it  is  as  dangerous  as  it  is  fascinating  to  depict  its 
end.  Of  this  only  we  may  be  certain,  that  there  is  no  phase 
of  social  life  in  wliich  its  motives  are  not,  however  dimly  mani- 
festly penetrating;  and  it  will  one  day  mean,  perhaps  for  the 
first  time,  a  state  wherein  the  basis  of  citizenship  will  be  the 
active  intelligence  of  enlightened  men. 

204  "Trevelyan's  Life,"  I,  149  n. 


APPENDIX 
NOTE  ON  THE  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  LAMENNAIS 

Any  full  list  of  the  books  on  Lamennais  would  itself  make  a 
small  volume.  All  I  propose  to  do  here  is  to  suggest  the  most 
valuable  sources  for  the  period  covered  by  the  preceding  essay 
(A).  For  his  actual  works  I  have  used  the  quarto  edition  in 
two  volumes  published  just  after  his  excommunication.  This 
contains  everything  of  importance  up  to  that  time,  including 
his  articles  in  L'Avenir.  Hardly  less  important  is  the  corre- 
spondence of  which  there  are  several  volumes.  (I)  Those  edited 
by  M.  Forgues.     (II)  Those  edited  by  his  nephew,  A.  Blaize. 

(III)  The  "Letters  to  the  Baron  de  Vitrolles"  ed.    Forgues. 

(IV)  The  "Letters  to  Montalembert"  ed.  Forgues.  (V)  "Un 
Lamennais  inconnu"  ed.  Laveille;  (the  letters  to  Benoit  d'Azy.) 
(VI)  "Lamennais  d'apres  des  documents  inedits"  ed.  Roussel, 
contains  many  unpublished  letters,  but  the  commentary  by  their 
collector  is  ignorant  and  prejudiced.  (VII)  "Lettres  a  la  baronne 
Cottu"  ed.  d'Haussonville.  Those  volumes  edited  by  M. Forgues 
are  by  far  the  most  valuable,  though  the  correspondence  edited 
by  Blaize  has  much  significance  for  the  early  years;  the  rest 
of  what  has  been  published  has,  except  for  odd  letters,  mostly 
a  literary  or  psychological  interest  (B).  The  most  complete 
life  of  Lamennais  is  that  by  the  Abb6  Charles  Boutard  in  three 
volumes  (1913).  It  is,  however,  severely  hampered,  as  a  critical 
study  by  the  necessary  theological  limitations.  The  life  by 
Eugene  Spuller  (1892)  errs  almost  as  much  on  the  side  of  anti- 
clericalism,  but  it  is  the  best  brief  study  we  have.  On  the  early 
years  the  full  study  by  M,  Charles  Marechal  is  admirable.  On 
the  conflict  with  Rome  I  have  used  the  essay  by  Pere  Dudon, 
"Lamennais  et  la  Saintc  Siege,"  as  it  collects  all  the  relevant 
documents,  but  its  polemical  object  is  obvious  throughout.  The 
best  philosophic  criticism  is  still  that  of  Janet,  "La  Philosophic 
de  Lamennais"  (1890),  but  there  are  good  studies  by  M.  Faguet 
in  the  second  volume  of  his  "  Politiques  et  Moralistes,"  and 


AUTHORITY   IN   THE   MODERN   STATE        389 

by  M.  Ferraz  in  the  second  volume  of  his  "Histoire  de  la 
Philosophic  en  France."  That  by  Renan,  in  his  "Essais  de  Mo- 
rale et  de  Critique"  is  by  far  the  most  sympathetic  psychological 
analysis;  though  the  more  famous  essay  of  Sainte-Beuve  in 
the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  for  May  1834  was  one  of  the  first 
to  seize  the  real  significance  of  his  life;  see  also  the  essay  re- 
printed in  Portraits  Contemporains.  I  have  seen  no  adequate 
study  in  English,  though  there  exists  a  book  by  the  Hon.  W. 
Gibson  on  "Lamennaisand  Liberal  Catholicism"  which  I  have 
been  unable  to  procure. 


INDEX 


Acton  (Lord),  on  states-general,  39; 
definition  of  liberty,  55;  nature 
of  good  in  politics,  121. 

Aristotle,  sets  the  perspective  of 
political  science,  19;  on  the  pur- 
pose of  the  state,  20;  on  separa- 
tion of  powers,  70;  value  of  his 
definition  of  citizenship,  73;  on 
secret  of  happiness,  89. 

Arnold  (Dr.),  on  Jewish  emancipa- 
tion, 38. 

Authority,  justification  of,  32  f.; 
limitations  of,  4^-5  perversions 
of,  49  f.;  problem  of,  often  un- 
known to  government,  ^ ;  must 
be  divided,  69  f.;  judgeti  by  pur- 
poses, 74 ;  Sanger  of,  where  cen- 
tralised, 7SJ.;  should  be  divided 
for  sake  of  ethical  achievement, 
107  f . ;  Bonald  derives  from  God, 
""  r$l ;  necessary  in  Donald's  theory, 
T?§;  division  of  rejected  by 
Bonald,  15,0:  not  justified  by 
mere  existence,  224:  cannot  have 
implicit  obedience,  266;  mis- 
taken use  of,  by  Ronie7"27H.; 
relation  to  liberty,  27;!:  must  be 
democratically  interpreted,  279; 
must  be  widespread,  305;  de- 
rives from  individual  personality, 
311;  dependent  on  popular  ac- 
ceptance, 336. 

B 

Bacon  (Francis),  definition  of  trust 
quoted,  102. 


Bagehot  (Walter),  on  danger  of 
labor  combination  in  politics,  36; 
criticism  of  reform,  40. 

Bentham  (Jeremy),  sneers  at  natu- 
ral rights,  63. 

B^ranger,  prosecution  of,  214. 

Berryer,  denies  that  the  articles  of 
1682  are  a  part  of  French  law, 
226. 

Bismarck,  failure  of  his  attack  on 
Roman  Catholic  church,  45;  his 
canons  of  conduct,  69. 

Blackstone,  on  sovereignty,  24; 
attitude  to  corporations,  84. 

Bodin,  on  sovereignty,  24;  on 
separation  of  powers,  70. 

Bonald,  character,  128  f.;  theories 
derived  from  17th  century,  130; 
his  political  theory,  130  f . ;  at- 
tack on  individualism,  136f.; 
implications  of  his  attack,  143  f ; 
his  religious  philosophy,  147  f.; 
on  danger  of  discussion,  151  f . ; 
on  importance  of  rehgion  in  state, 
157  f.;  criticism  of  his  views, 
161  f.;  later  influence,  166  f.; 
debt  of  Lamennais  to,  205. 

Bossuet,  the  inspiration  of  Bonald, 
130-1 ;  his  attack  on  the  reforma- 
tion, 143. 

Bourget  (P.),  a  reincarnation  of 
Bonald,  170;  his  traditionalism, 
177  f.;  conception  of  aristocracy, 
180;  attack  on  parliamentary 
regime,  183;  wants  a  monarchy 
in   France,    185. 


392 


INDEX 


Bradley  (F.  H.),  defect  of  his  ideal- 
ism, 67 

Brandeis  (Mr.  Justice),  significance 
of,  116. 

Briand  (A.),  on  lack  of  initiative  in 
State,  357;  vindicates  sovereign 
state,  365;  on  nature  of  state, 
366;  on  significance  of  govern- 
ment, 368. 

Bright  (John),  opposition  to  factory 
acts,  38;  Queen  Victoria's  view 
of,  51. 

Brunetiire  (F.),  on  need  for  religious 
revival  in  France,  114;  accepts 
Donald's  theories,  169;  his  politi- 
cal philosophy,  171  f.;  accepts 
the  authoritarianism  of  Bossuet, 
173;   on  value  of  orthodoxy,  175. 

Bryce  (Viscount),  corruption  in 
American  politics,  48. 

Butler  (Charles),  on  civil  service,  50. 

Burke  (Edmund),  dislike  of  atheists, 
40;  on  danger  of  examining  the 
state,  51;   on  property,  52. 

Carlyle  (T.),  epic  theory  of  history, 
19;  on  consequences  of  bureau- 
cracy, 50. 

Cecil  (Lord  Hugh),  defends  laissez- 
faire,  111. 


Chalmers  (T.),  on  church  and  state, 
85. 

Charles  X,  character  of,  215;  nature 
of  his  rule,  283. 

Chateaubriand,  relations  with 
Lamennais,  208. 

Church  (Roman),  limits  power  of 
state,  45;  history  of,  during 
Revolution,  125  f.;  value  of,  to 
statesman,  158;  virtue  of  its 
unity,  176;  under  Napoleon, 
191  f.;  during  Restoration,  199  f.; 


Lamennais  argues  that  all  other 
churches  are  illogical,  203;  glori- 
fication of,  by  Lamennais,  205  f.; 
entirely  separate  from  French 
state,  210  f.;  needs  unity  for  its 
existence,  220;  as  a  world-state, 
223;  as  a  voluntary  society,  231; 
appeal  of  Lamennais  to,  241  f.; 
condemns  Lamennais,  243  f . ; 
meaning  of  her  expulsion  of 
Lamennais,  260  f.;  dissent  in, 
261;  conditions  of  its  internal 
life,  264;  what  loyalty  to,  means, 
268;    Tyrrell's  analysis  of,  270  f. 

Civil  Service,  experience  of,  in 
relation  to  power,  50;  grievances 
of,  95;  demand  for  autonomy  in 
France,  326;  complaints  of,  327  f.; 
favouritism  in,  328;  control  of 
opinion  in,  330;  phj-sical  condi- 
tions in,  331;  discipline  and  pro- 
motion in,  332;  direction  of  its 
ideas,  334;  claims  of,  336  f.; 
class-structure  in,  337;  revolu- 
tionarj'  spirit  of,  340;  me'^hods 
of  organising,  342-3;  attack  of 
jurists  on  syndicalism  in,  353  f.; 
nature  of  office  in,  360-1;  attack 
of  politicians  on  syndicalism  in, 
365;  weakness  of  this  attack, 
368  f . ;  attempts  at  reform  of, 
376  f. 

Clarke  (Mr.  Justice),  on  control  of 
administration,  100. 

Clemenceau  (G.),  on  overstaffing  of 
French  departments,  331;  power 
to  remain  in  office,  345;  on  law 
of  1884,  357;  vindicates  sovereign 
state,  365;  on  nature  of  state, 
367;  on  power  of  government 
over  civil  service,  368. 

Comte,  influence  of  Bonald  on,  168. 

Conscience,    denies   sovereignty   of 


INDEX 


S9S 


state,  45;  controls  the  exercise 
of  power,  55;  the  root  of  indi- 
viduahsm,  59;  attack  by  Rome 
on  freedom  of,  248;  supremacy 
of,  in  last  instance,  251;  de- 
termines right  and  wrong,  254; 
significance  of,  as  reservoir  of 
right,  265  f.;  Royer-CoUard  in- 
sists on  value  of,  311;  cannot  be 
surrendered,  319. 
Courier  (P.  L.),  prosecution  of,  214. 

D 

Dicey  (A.  V.),  on  penal  code  of 
nineteenth  century,  49;  on  state 
and  individual,  53;  attacks 
French  administrative  law,  64; 
on  judicial  legislation,  72;  on 
administrative  law  in  England, 
98;  on  the  characteristics  of  the 
age,  112. 

DoUinger  (I.),  kindred  ideas  to  those 
of  Lamennais,  236;  with  Lamen- 
nais  at  his  condemnation,  247. 

Duguit  (Leon),  importance  of  juris- 
prudence in  new  state,  89;  on 
decline  of  the  sovereign  state, 
114;  denies  right  of  civil  servant 
to  strike,  335;  on  passage  of  era 
of  rights,  349 ;  on  nature  of  public 
office,  361;  on  nature  of  state, 
378. 

Dupanloup  (Bishop),  intrigues 
against  Lamennais,  243. 

Durkheim  (E.),  on  rights  as  classi- 
fied by  state,  115. 

E 

England,  development  of  state  in, 
23-4;  development  of  adminis- 
strative  law  in,  72;  problem  of 
colonial  relations,  75;  problem 
of  industrial  groups  in,  77;  cor- 
porations in,  84;    irresponsibility 


of  state  in,  97;  growth  of  admin- 
istrative law  in,  99  f.;  recent 
political  change  in,  109  f.;  decline 
of  Parliament  in,  300. 
Esmein  (A.),  on  relation  of  execu- 
tive to  sovereignty,  31;  stands 
alone  in  French  political  theory, 
114. 


Figgis  (J.  N.),  importance  of  char- 
acter, 106;  on  anti-theocratic 
character  of  poUtics,  225;  on 
right  and  rights,  386. 

France,  development  of  state  in, 
24;  decentralisation  in,  79;  re- 
sponsibility of  state  there  de- 
veloping, 97;  recent  political 
change  in,  113  f.;  need  of  new 
institutions  in,  185;  Restora- 
tion in,  281  f . ;  power  of  Chamber 
of  Deputies  in,  305;  right  of 
association  in,  321  f . ;  civil  service 
in,  321-85. 

Freedom,  definition  of,  37,  55,  310; 
of  thought  must  be  absolute,  56; 
significance  of,  90  f . ;  reasons  for 
emphasising,  121  f.;  dangers  of, 
156;  essential  to  progress,  231; 
place  in  organised  life,  268;  rela- 
tion to  individual  conscience, 
275;  in  practical  terms,  293  f.; 
of  press,  294;  of  rehgious  belief, 
295. 

French  Revolution,  attack  of 
Bonaldon,  128;  main  evil  of,  133; 
as  an  attack  on  Catholicism,  189; 
as  an  epoch  in  political  thought, 
281  f.;  attacked  by  thinkers  of 
Restoration,  283. 

G 

Gladstone  (W.  E.),  on  power  of 
property,  52. 


394 


INDEX 


Godwin  (William),  denies  need  for 
political  authority,  88. 

Government,  differentiated  from 
state,  28  f . ;  who  really  control  it, 
36;  economic  aspect  of,  38;  does 
not  possess  sovereignty,  65;  dis- 
tribution of  its  powers,  70  f . ; 
irresponsible  as  agent  of  state, 
96  f.;  as  a  trust,  102;  depends  on 
religion  for  its  stability,  157  f.;  a 
chimera  to  Brunetiere  when 
democratic,  175;  parliamentary 
government  criticised,  183  f . ; 
Lamennais  attacks  democratic, 
218;  main  problem  of,  239;  value 
of  .  parliamentary,  298 ;  distinc- 
tion between  representative  and 
parliamentary,  299;  must  be 
reconciled  with  liberty,  313;  par- 
liamentary, declining,  348. 

Green  (T.  H.),  on  nature  of  rights, 
43;  value  of  constitutional 
methods,  44 ;  definition  of  liberty, 
55;   on  the  basis  of  the  state,  66. 

Gregory  XVI,  issues  encyclical 
against  Lamennais,  248;  feeling 
of  Lamennais  about,  249;  pro- 
tests against  Lamennais'  refusal 
to  submit,  251;  excommunicates 
Lamennais,  257. 

Grey  (Lord),  mistaken  colonial 
policy,  76. 

Guerin  (M.  de),  influence  of  Lamen- 
nais on,  233;  indignation  at 
sufferings  of   Lamennais,   253. 

Guizot  (F.),  forbidden  to  lecture, 
214;  indignation  against  Lamen- 
nais, 256;  relations  with  Royer- 
Collard,  288. 

H 

Iladley  (A.  T.),  on  purpose  of 
Anicricim  constitution,  117. 


Hamilton  (W.  H.),  on  price-system, 
117. 

Hanna  (Mark),  obsolete  character 
of  his  ideas,  116. 

Harrington,  on  relation  of  political 
to  economic  power,  38;  on  politi- 
cal discussion,  47;  significance  of 
economic  power,  88. 

Hauriou  (M.),  on  strikes  in  the  civil 
service,  353;  on  types  and  powers 
of  civil  service,  360. 

Hegel,  on  state  and  society,  21. 

Hobbes,  his  theory  of  the  despotic 
state,  23;  necessity  for  unlimited 
power,  32 ;  on  fear  as  basis  of  law, 
33;    fear  of  group-persons,  84. 

Holmes  (Mr.  Justice),  on  fourteenth 
amendment,  39;  on  relation 
between  liberty  and  equahty,  54; 
significance  of,  116,  118;  on 
bargaining  power  of  labor,  356. 

Hume  (D.),  on  power  of  public 
opinion,  27;  on  obedience  as  the 
necessary  basis  of  society,  32. 

I 

Ingram  (J.  K.),  on  inadequacy  of 
self-interest  as  basis  of  the  state, 
37. 


James  I,  on  the  political  aspect  of 

Presbyterianism,  23. 
Jaures    (Jean),    sympathises    with 

the  proletarian  revolution,   114. 


Lacordaire,  friendship  for  Lamen- 
nais, 233;  leaves  Lamennais  at 
Rome,  245. 

Lamennais  (F.),  Tragic  interest  of 
his  life,  127;  problem  of,  189  f.; 
early  life,  193  f.;    difficulties  with 


INDEX 


395 


Catholicism  in  his  early   years, 
194;  attack  on  Gallicanism,  196; 
in  exile,  198;   early  ultramontan- 
ism,  199  f . ;   sudden  rise  to  fame, 
201;     danger  of   religious   indif- 
ference,   202  f . ;     glorification    of 
Rome,    205  f . ;     accuses    French 
state  of  atheism,   209  f . ;     urges 
absolute  power  of  pope,  211  f.; 
attack  on  philosophy,  212;   sepa- 
ration from  the  Royalists,  214 
attack  on  the  secular  state,  217  f . 
need  of  unity  in  the  church,  220  f . 
declares    Rome    a    world    state 
223  f.;    transition  to  liberalism 
225  f.;   distrust  of  the  state,  228 
new    confidence    in    the    masses 
230  f.;    foundation  of  L'Avenir 
232  f.;     its    programme,    234  f. 
statement    of    the    problem    of 
authority,  239;    appeal  to  Rome, 
241  f.;     visit    to    Rome,    243  f.; 
sense  of  the  ills  of  the  church,  246; 
his  condemnation,  247  f . ;  accusa- 
tions   against    him,    250  f.;     his 
protest,    253;     the    break    with 
Rome,  255  f . ;    his  excommunica- 
tion, 257  f . ;    implications  of  his 
attack    on    the    church,    259  f . ; 
causes  of  his  quarrel  with  Rome, 
263;  results  of  his  teaching,  267  f . ; 
later  career  of,  280. 

Lemaitre  (Jules),  converted  to 
traditionalism,  170. 

Law,  natural,  revival  of,  63  f. 

Leroy  (M.),  on  rule  of  law  in  Eng- 
land, 64;  on  the  decline  of  the 
sovereign-state,  114;  on  state  as 
employer,  338;  on  need  for 
federal  organisation,  352. 

Local  Government,  value  of,  76  f . 

Locke,  on  the  limitation  of  power, 
24;   on  separation  of  powers,  70. 


Lowell  (A.  L.),  on  problem  of  public 
opinion,  29. 

Luther,  the  founder  of  the  modern 
state,  21;  on  right  and  expedi- 
ency, 41;  attack  of  Bonald  on, 
139  f. 

M 

Macaulay  (Lord),  on  importance 
of  middle-classes,  110;  on  value 
of  reform,  387. 

Machiavelli,  on  history  as  a  cycle, 
19. 

MacTaggart  (J.  E.  M.),  on  society 
as  an  organism,  35. 

Madison  (James),  relation  of  fac- 
tions to  property,  39;  on  separa- 
tion of  powers,  71. 

Maine  (Sir  Henry),  on  habit,  33. 

Maistre  (Joseph  de),  his  literary 
power,  127;  affinity  with  Bonald, 
152;  part  in  ultramontane  revival, 
192  f.;  praise  of  Lamennais,  201, 
207;  the  fruit  of  his  work,  248. 

Maitland  (F.  W.),  on  dangers  of 
centralisation,  84;  need  for  re- 
sponsible state,  97. 

Maurras  (Charles),  his  significance, 
170. 

Metternich,  intrigues  against 
Lamennais,  244,  256. 

Mill  (J.  S.),  definition  of  liberty,  55; 
on  rights  of  property,  102;  on 
inabiUty  of  House  of  Commons  to 
understand  workers,  112;  on 
value  of  variety,  188. 

Montalembert,  joins  Lamennais, 
234;  his  visit  to  Rome,  245; 
translates  hymn  to  Polish  liberty, 
250;  desertion  of  Lamennais, 
258. 
Montesquieu,  on  separation  of 
powers,  70;  attack  on  his  doc- 
trine by  Bonald,  150. 


396 


INDEX 


Montlosier,  significance  of  his  doc- 
trine, 222. 


Paley,  on  nature  of  sovereignty,  26. 

Peel  (Sir  R.),  on  right  and  expe- 
diency, 41. 

Pitt  (WilHam),  his  political  train- 
ing, 47. 

Plato,  on  the  nature  of  virtue,  20. 

Pound  (Roscoe),  law  in  books  and 
law  in  action,  42;  on  decline  of 
natural  law,  64. 

Protestantism,  attack  of  Lamennais 
on,  203 ;  counter-extravagance 
of  Jesuitism,  274. 

Proudhon,  the  genius  of  French 
labour  movement,  114. 

R 

Reformation,  source  of  modern 
state,  21;  Donald's  view  of,  139. 

Renan  (E.),  significance  of  his 
scepticism  of  democracy,  168; 
estimate  of  Lamennais,  190. 

Rights,  defined,  43;  significance  of, 
46  f.;  origins  of,  61  f.;  relation 
to  right,  225;  value  of  the  right 
to  be  wrong,  312;  relation  to 
duties,  349;  new  methods  of 
defending,  381  f. 

Rhodes  (Cecil),  disregard  of  moral- 
ity in  politics,  49. 

Root  (Elihu),  obsolete  character  of 
his  ideas,  116. 

Rousseau,  on  freedom  in  England, 
24;  on  residence  of  sovereignty, 
28;  difficulty  of  his  view,  29;  on 
consent  as  basis  of  state,  34;  on 
the  paradox  of  freedom,  108; 
attack  of  Bonald  on,  137  f.;  in- 
fluence on  Lamennais,  193; 
raises  fundamental  question  of 
politics,  223;    and  Savigny,  2Sr); 


on  associations,  321;  on  mutual 
character  of  social  contract,  351; 
view  of  citizenship  rejected,  360. 
Royer-Collard,  early  life  of,  287; 
character  of,  288;  function  of  his 
party,  289;  denies  the  existence 
of  sovereignty,  290  f . ;  on  the 
Charter,  291;  its  history  and 
objects,  292  f . ;  on  freedom  of 
press,  294;  of  rehgious  belief, 
295;  on  independence  of  magis- 
tracy, 297;  on  value  of  parlia- 
mentary government,  298;  on 
danger  of  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
300;  danger  of  power,  301;  in- 
fluence of  Montesquieu  on,  302; 
on  value  of  defining  rights,  305; 
defects  of  his  outlook,  309;  on 
moral  inadequacy  of  state  as 
mere  agent  of  survival,  314; 
estimate  of,  320. 

S 

Sainte-Beuve,  influence  of  Lamen- 
nais on,  233;  on  the  "Paroles 
d'un  Croyant,"  255. 

Seeley  (J.),  on  federal  government, 
74. 

Smith  (Adam),  on  education  as  a 
state-activity,  59;  on  natural 
law,  61;  attacked  by  Bonald, 
146  f. 

Smith  (F.  E.),  on  Welsh  Disestab- 
lishment Bill,  58. 

Sovereignty,  denied  to  state  by 
churches  and  trade  unions,  27; 
meaning  of,  29;  implication  of, 
_41  f.;  theory  of,  rejected,  SS; 
needs  new  definition,  119-120: 
of  nation  as  individualistic,  138; 
must  be  unified,  in  Bonald's  view, 
150;  why  it  needs  distribution, 
177;  and  government,  265;  in- 
dividual is  beyond,   276;     exist- 


INDEX 


397 


ence  of,  denied  by  Royer-CoUard, 
290  f . ;  legal  theory  of,  invalid  in 
actual  life,  308;    checks  on,  309. 

Stammler  (R.),  on  natural  law  with 
changing  content,  64. 

State,  character  of  its  history,  19; 
origins  of  modern,  21;  inherits 
papal  prerogative,  23;  differen- 
tiated from  government,  25  f . ; 
real  nature  of,  31  f.;  relation  to 
individual  will,  47  f . ;  possible 
perversion  of,  48  f . ;  significance 
of  resistance  to,  53;  necessary 
units  of,  54  f . ;  different  from 
society,  65;  realistic  analysis  of, 
66  f.;  is  basically  federal,  74  f.; 
cannot  absorb  individual  alle- 
giance, 83;  primarily  a  body  of 
consumers,  85;  must  be  based  on 
representative  government,  91 ; 
relation  of,  to  criticism,  93;  rela- 
tion to  industry,  94  f.;  extension 
of  powers,  98;  should  be  made 
responsible,  105;  its  modern 
direction,  109  f.;  must  be  moral- 
ised, 122;  religious  aspect  of,  in 
Bonald's  theory,  147;  must 
choose  between  atheism  and 
supremacy  of  Rome,  210;  attack 
on  its  sovereignty  by  Lamennais, 
217  f.;  Lamennais'  distrust  of, 
228;  Royer-Collard's  view  of, 
289;  must  not  establish  a  church, 
296;  must  divide  power,  303;  is 
pluralistic,  304;  rights  not  de- 
rived from,  312;  nature  of  its 
ethics,  315;  worth  of,  consists 
in  its  individual  members,  318; 
as  an  industrial  instrument,  325; 
reconstruction  of,  by  civil  service, 
341;  centralisation  in  the  modern, 
343  f . ;  civil  service  desires  re- 
sponsible   power    in,    347;     im- 


possibility of  sovereign,  363; 
French  defence  of,  373  f . ;  rights 
of,  374;  as  public  service  cor- 
poration, 378;  responsibility  of, 
380;  federalism  developing  in, 
384;  significance  of  change  in  its 
direction,  385. 

T 

Taine  (H.),  significance  in  tradi- 
tionalism, 167;  his  pessimism, 
168;  on  origins  of  centralisation 
in  France,  343  f . 

Taylor  (Sir  H.),  on  process  of  ad- 
ministration, 50. 

Theocracy,  decline  of,  123;  value 
of,  124. 

Thomas  (Albert),  on  consumers' 
representation,  352. 

Thucydides,  on  history  as  a  store- 
house of  political  wisdom,  19. 

Tocqueville  (A.  de),  on  right  of 
association  in  Anglo-Saxon  coun- 
tries, 322;  on  centralised  ad- 
ministration, 323. 

Trevelyan  (Sir  C),  on  cause  of 
civil  service  reform,  50. 

Tyrell  (George),  as  successor  of 
Lamennais,  267;  on  loyalty  to 
church,  268;  on  limitations  of 
authority,  269;  nature  of  his 
problem,  272  f . ;  insistence  on 
freedom,  275;  on  weaknesses  of 
Rome,  277;  on  nature  of  social 
will,  278. 

U 
United  States,  development  of 
state  in,  25;  involves  decentralisa- 
tion by  its  size,  75;  problem  of 
industrial  groups  in,  78;  irre- 
sponsibility of  state  in,  97;  ad- 
ministrative law  in,  99  f.;  recent 
political  change  in,  115  f.;    sepa- 


398 


INDEX 


ration  of  powers  in,  303;  growth 
of  executive  power  in,  307. 
Unity,  Medieval  worship  of,  23;  of 
state  demands  absolutism,  149; 
achieved  by  rehgion,  157  f.;  why 
rejected,  187  f.;  conditions  of, 
204 ;  Lamennais  learns  danger  of, 
243;  search  for  principles  of, 
283;   juristic  attitude  to,  354. 


Ventura  (Father),  attack  on  La- 
mennais, 241. 

Vitrolles  (Baron),  feeling  against 
the  "Paroles,"  255. 

Vogu6  (M.  de),  on  importance  of 
tradition,  166. 

Voltaire,  identifies  king  and  state, 
24;  influence  on  Lamennais,  193. 


W 

Wallas  (Graham),  on  leadership  of 
men,  32;  on  importance  of 
workers'  interest  in  education, 
59;  on  syndicalism,  88,  352;  on 
happiness  in  work,  90;  on  politi- 
cal trades,  107;  on  need  for  new 
institutions.  111;  on  lack  of 
interest  in  the  administrative 
process,  324. 

Whitgift,   on   Presbyterianism,   23. 

Y 

Yates  (Edmund),  experiences  in 
postofTice,  50. 


Zimmern    (A.),    on   danger   of   dis- 
unity, 93. 


6   114 


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